After reading The Wednesday Surprise, I wanted to find more books by Eve Bunting. One of the ones I picked up was Fly Away Home.
Fly Away Home is about a little boy and his father. They live in an airport because they are not able to pay rent or a house payment. It is told from the little boy's point of view. "Do not get noticed!" He goes through all the "rules" of living in an airport. He and his father have to sleep sitting up. "Do not get noticed!" They have to switch air terminals every night. "Do not get noticed!" They wash up in the bathrooms. "Do not get noticed!" There is a repeated word/phrase throughout the book which is, "do not get noticed!"The little boy sees many people, or friends, of theirs that get noticed because they are doing certain things. He knows and makes his audience aware that he is very mature for a four/five year old. He knows what he can do and cannot do while living at the airport.
The boy sees a bird one day that gets stuck in the airport. The bird's underlying significance represents freedom, and the boy sees that. Every time he gets sad about living in the airport, he thinks of the bird and how it took it awhile to get out, but eventually it was free.
The illustrations in this book were done by Ronald Himler. His use of illustrations compliment the text. When the little boy is describing a lady that got "taken away," he described her with a long, dirty coat pushing a cart. The picture on the opposite page showed just that. Himler uses changing colors to depict different moods of the little boy. On the page where he is upset because he doesn't think he is special it is really hard, cool and dark colors. Then it moves to bright and cheerful when he remembers the bird and knows that one day he will be free.
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