Discover the magic of nature through the eyes of a young Kwantlen girl in Joseph Dandurand’s “The Girl Who Loved the Birds”

Joseph Dandurand is a multi-award-winning author, poet, and playwright from Fort Langley, British Columbia as well as the director of the Kwantlen Cultural Centre. His numerous awards and honours include the BC Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence in 2021 and the Latner Writers’ Trust Poetry Prize in 2022. 

His latest book is a work for children, The Girl Who Loved the Birds (Nightwood Editions, 2023). Accompanied by beautiful watercolour illustrations by Kwantlen artist Elinor Atkins, the tender children’s story follows a young Kwantlen girl who shares her life with the birds of the island she calls home. She collects piles of sticks and moss for those building nests. She shares meals with eagles and owls. Ultimately, she forms a lifelong bond with her feathered friends – who start returning her kindness. Written with Dandurand’s trademark poetic simplicity, The Girl Who Loved the Birds is a resonant story of kinship and connection, and the third in a series of Kwantlen legends, following The Sasquatch, the Fire and the Cedar Baskets and A Magical Sturgeon. 

The book was born from a single evocative mental image. “I write using images I have stored somewhere in my head, and they appear when I am beginning a story or a poem” explains Dandurand. “This book was based upon the image I had of a young girl in the cedar forest gathering sticks to share with the small birds for their nests, and then carried on to become the full life story of this girl and her life of giving and sharing with the birds of her world.”

Dandurand is effusive in his praise for the artistry of his collaborator Atkins. “Eli is an amazing human being and artist. She is so gifted, and she is able to read my words and create wonderful images”. Dandurand’s favorite spread in the book is the front cover, and he found himself  surprised by the love he felt for the images and the story as he was writing it: “Not so much the images but the fact that something I wrote based upon one image becomes a book!”

He hopes that readers will linger over the words and images, and consider carefully the simple life of this girl, which she has shared with nature. The story reflects Dandurand’s personal experience and deep belief in the power and stories of nature. He himself lives on an island on the river and draws his own sense of belonging from life among the trees, with the many animals and birds that he sees each day.

The Girl Who Loved the Birds should prove popular with teachers, who can use it to teach about Indigenous perspectives, ancestral knowledge, and our responsibility to nature. And Dandurand stresses that the teachings in the book are “straightforward: Always give back. Do not take everything. Share. And always have a good mind and a good heart in everything you do in life.”

A beautiful book about the intrinsic connection between nature and cultural traditions, The Girl who Loved the Birds will delight readers, and spark reflection and conversation about the natural world as a shared wonder – and our responsibility to everything within it.

© Arpita Ghosal, SesayArts Magazine, 2023