A true event inspired this sto­ry which begins more real­is­ti­cal­ly than it ends. Israel hosts the high­est num­ber of migrat­ing birds in the world; one of these is caught in a net protec­tively cov­er­ing the kib­butz fish pond. A lit­tle girl, Maya, and her father save the bird, a stork, whose bro­ken wing can­not be repaired. They can­not return the stork to the wild, but they cre­ate a life for it in a ground nest. In anoth­er migra­tion, a male stork sees the female on the ground; he waits for her to join him in the tree, but the bird can­not fly; she does not come. True to its bio­log­i­cal imper­a­tive, the male will not live on the ground. Short­ly, he finds anoth­er female, builds a nest, and cre­ates a fam­i­ly. Just as these babies are ready to fly, their moth­er dis­ap­pears. Maya’s father arranges for a famer and his buck­et loader to lift the injured stork up to the nest to raise the babies. Maya rides up and places the bird in the nest. 

Hap­py end­ing? A zoo ornithol­o­gist doubts a bird with one wing could man­age in a tree. Kib­butz life is unex­plained. The pic­ture book arcs from man com­pen­sat­ing for nature to man manip­u­lat­ing nature, the implau­si­bil­i­ty of the out­come detract­ing from a gen­uine­ly mov­ing tale. The fan­ta­sy solu­tion aims for a heart­warm­ing vignette. It rings false and it detracts from the won­der­ful open­ing acts of car­ing. It denies that real­i­ty can some­times be heart­warm­ing, which would give us hope as well as warm fuzzies. The illus­tra­tions are soft; they deliv­er action and emo­tions nice­ly. A role-mod­el eco­log­i­cal sto­ry for chil­dren morphs into a fairy tale with­out expla­na­tion. Move­ment from fact to fic­tion, although pleas­ant, dis­ap­points. For ages 3 – 6.