The Strange Birds of Flannery O’Connor: A Life

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”There are many things that have stayed with me after my first few readings of this book. Perhaps the two that have left me pondering, the two which I hope I can pass on to my daughter are – the importance of staring and the beauty enmeshed in suffering … So I hope that you too will pick up this book, and that you might stare, at birds and people, at leaves and fireflies.”
~ Dappled Things

“Like O’Connor, this gangly art object of a book tracing her first forays as a writer to an outsize fascination with the chickens in her childhood backyard is a “strange bird,” in the most wondrous of ways … Alznauer pairs a grounded, authentic vernacular with a lyricism that takes flight, while Zhu’s depiction of odd human proportions against brilliant brushstroke plumage stuns.”
~ New York Times, Best 25 Children’s Books of 2020

“There’s a responsive touch of weirdness in Ping Zhu’s artwork for this lovely book with its glowing colors, bold shapes, and proportions that shift between realistic and outlandish … The bright plumage in a final soaring image suggests what a strange bird O’Connor was herself.”
~ Wall Street Journal

“In pitch-perfect harmony, writer Amy Alznauer and artist Ping Zhu honor the life of the prominent Georgia author and her affinity for the feathered species.”
~ Atlanta Journal Constitution

”Like the best children’s books, Alznauer’s words recognize the cleverness of their audience; they never condescend or talk down. Zhu’s work reminds us that illustrations shouldn’t flatten the world either. Fluent in the grammar of both abstract and representational art, her work is full of dimension and color, symmetry and asymmetry, life and breath. The Strange Birds of Flannery O’Connor holds potential enough to inspire its youngest readers, and to stoke the smoldering embers of curiosity in its oldest.”
~ Plough