As an adult, John Audubon was the best known wildlife artist of the 19th century, and his book, Birds of America, is the standard against which all subsequent bird art has been measured. In this story about the artist's childhood in the West Indies and France, John's love of drawing sends him into the fields and woods near his country house in pursuit of winged models. Games and adventures also beckon: John confronts a ghost in the old water mill tower, presents his friend Cecile with a surprise birthday gift (that goes horribly wrong!), and sails off to seek his fortune in America. Special features include a summary of John's adult accomplishments, fun facts detailing little-known information about him, and a time line of his life.
Long ago, a little boy opened his brown eyes sleepily and gave a wide yawn as he stretched himself awake.
“Something is different about this morning,” the young boy said to himself. He wondered what it was.
Jean was in bed in his own room, the same room in which he had gone to sleep and wakened each evening and each morning for as long as he could remember.
He could see the same mosquito-netting curtains hung about his bed like a veil to keep out the hordes of hungry insects which were always there, ready and waiting to take a bite of nice, tender boy.
The green shutters were closed, as always, to keep out the blazing sunlight of the West Indian island
where young Jean lived. A few beams of the bright sunlight managed to creep between the shutters and make slender white lines on the floor.
Some little sugar birds which had come in through the kitchen door were hopping about the furniture and hunting insects on the floor.
“There is nothing different about you,” said the little boy to the sugar birds. They were tame animals
which came into the house every day and went quietly about picking up crumbs and bugs and flies.
Outside the house, the trogons and the gorgeously colored chatterers were quarreling in the mango trees, making more noise than usual.
When the boy listened with his sharp ears, he could hear the voices of the laborers down in the cane fields. They were singing in deep, slow, musical tones.
“It is the same song that they always sing,” said young Jean. He yawned again and slipped out of bed,
looking carefully before he set his slim bare feet down on the floor. In this hot country, a huge tarantula, or poison spider, might come in for a visit. Or a long snake might choose to take a nap in the cool shade of a bedroom.
Jean ran to the window and threw open the green shutter. White sunlight flooded the room with a blast
of oven-like heat. Far beyond the mango trees was the sea, so brilliantly blue that it hurt his eyes to look at it. The green cane waved gently in the steep fields which rose from the sea. While he looked, Jean could see what looked like a tiny dark cloud moving above the shoreline, high in the sky.
“The swallows are leaving!” he cried.
Now, suddenly, he knew what had made this morning different. He hadn’t heard the morning songs of the blue-gray birds which spent several months of the year in Haiti. Usually, they had wakened him every morning with a shrill, sweet chorus outside his window.
He leaned out still farther, almost falling from the window, in order to watch the dark cloud as it moved swiftly away.
“Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye!” he called, waving
his hand. A strange feeling of loneliness came over him, for he loved the swallows.
“Someday I would like to follow the swallows and see where they go,” he thought.
Captain Audubon, his father, had told him that the birds went north, many of them to a place called
North America.
“When I grow up, I am going to follow those birds to North America!” he said to the birds in the mango trees.
The trogons laughed and laughed, and the chatterers scolded in their harsh voices.
“Silly, silly, silly!” they seemed to say.
Just then Celestine came rushing into the room.
“It is time you were up, you sleepyhead!” she called.
She was a tall enslaved woman who took care of the little boy and his sister. Jean’s mother had died
when he was too young to remember her very well. Since then, Jean’s father had put Celestine in charge of the children.
Table of Contents
1 The Captain Arrives
2 A New Mother
3 Jean Makes a Trade
4 Birds of a Feather
5 Wheatstacks
6 A Scarecrow Meets a Ghost
7 An Owl and an Egg
8 From Nature to Lessons
9 A Gift for a Lady
10 Days to Remember
11 Jean Goes to Rochefort
12 To Paris and Back
13 Bird of Passage
14 Mill Grove and Lucy
15 Shy Birds
What Happened Next?
Fun Facts about John Audubon
When John Audubon Lived
What Does That Mean?
About the Author
About the Author
Miriam E. Mason was a teacher and editor who wrote more than 50 books for young readers and served as a consultant for textbooks for elementary school students. She was an Indiana Author of the Year.
