Fifty-five Feathers

by Ben Brown, Helen Taylor (Illustrator)

Paperback

Published January 1, 2004

About the author

Ben Brown is an award winning New Zealand children’s author, poet, and short story/non-fiction/freelance writer.

Librarian's Note: There are multiple authors with this name. For disambiguation, this is Ben [5] Brown.

Reviews

[Manybooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yes, Ben Brown and Helen Taylor's 2004 picture book Fifty-five Feathers should work very nicely and successfully for children learning their numbers, with basic (and fun) addition/counting practice of the numbers one to fifty-five (featuring ten endemic to New Zealand bird species). And just to say that I also very much appreciate Brown's no holds barred and sufficiently critical and condemning additional information at the back of Fifty-five Feathers with regard to the early 20th century extinction of the huia and pointing out that many of the native to New Zealand birds featured in Fifty-five feathers are currently (at least for 2004) endangered and sometimes even critically so (due to habitat loss, invasive species, indiscriminate hunting, the feather trade, pollution, large scale farming), although I personally certainly consider it rather academically lacking that Ben Brown does neither bother to include small sections of scientific/zoological details about each of the ten NZ birds nor equally a list of books and websites for further reading (and that this would in my opinion much increase the educational value of Fifty-Five Feathers).

However, while for me (and as already alluded to above) the math practice Ben Brown features in Fifty-five Feathers is wonderfully, engagingly rendered and that Helen Taylor's accompanying illustrations (pukeko, kakapo, kiwi, kotuko, takahe, kea, piwaikaka, kereru, kokako and huia) are a vision of absolute aesthetic loveliness (colourful, realistic, glowingly enchanting) and also as such successfully visually mirror Brown's printed words and in particular the numbers being textually presented, so that for example the number of depicted kakapo (two) equals the digits verbally shown and so on and so on until ten bird species are reached (and that counting the number of birds depicted by Taylor comes to exactly fifty-five, is the number of feathers pukeko needs to make a warm winter cloak for her friend, the gecko, who is is cold in the New Zealand winter and needs warmth), sorry, but the entire premise of a feather cloak for the gecko, this kind of manages to rather rub me the wrong proverbial way (since so many endemic New Zealand birds are endangered due to being hunted for in particular their feathers) and that therefore, the extinct huia being shown in Fifty-five Feathers as leaving the last ten feathers for the gecko's coat (and that each of the featured birds also give up parts of their plumage), this entire scenario really makes me personally feel a bit uncomfortable and I thus do kind of wish that Ben Brown could have thought of another scenario for Fifty-five Feathers and not be featuring a cloak made of bird feathers and in particular of feathers made from endangered New Zealand avian species.

But still four stars for Fifty-five Feathers and definitely recommended, as in my opinion, the combination of text and images is definitely nicely successful for its intended mathematics purpose (and in particular since Ben Brown is Maori and that Fifty-five Feathers should also thus be considered as being Own Voices). But yes indeed, if I were to use Fifty-five Feathers with or for young children, I would certainly be wanting to discuss my personal issues with the author, my reservations with Ben Brown basing the story for Fifty-five Feathers on making a garment out of bird feathers, out of something that has actually and in fact contributed to native New Zealand bird species being hunted and made endangered (and with the huia, of course, extinct for more than a century).