Monster Birds

Book Review:

Monster Birds is a retelling of a Navajo folktale in which twin brothers must save the Anasazi villages from two Monster Birds who are preying upon their people. This book is a continuation of the story from another of Browne's books, Monster Slayer. The twins, Child Born of Water and Monster Slayer, are given magic feathers and lightning arrows by their father, Sunbearer. These are to be used to help the twins kill the Monster Birds. Upon meeting the mother giant, the boys are swooped into the air and dropped into the nest of the bird where they are to be used as food for her young.

With the boys' journey, the reader is given a glimpse of Navajo beliefs. The author offers selected enriching vocabulary words from her culture. We learn of the two types of rain, the strong and thundering Male Rain and the gentle falling Female Rain. The tale focuses on how the mighty eagle and the wise owl came to be. Each was originally a fledgling of the Monster Birds, but the twins transformed them into birds that are respected and utilized by their Navajo people

Vee Browne was born in 1956, in Ganado, Arizona of the Bitter Water and Water Flows Together clans. She has been awarded the Cowboy Hall of Fame Award, the Buddy Bo Jack Nationwide Award for Humanitarianism for Children's Books and Rounce and Coffin Club-Los Angeles 1994 Western Books Award of Merit. She is presently a language arts teacher and a school counselor at the Cottonwood Day School on the Navajo Indian Reservation in northeastern Arizona. Along with writing three books, she has also contributed short stories and poetry to several anthologies.

 

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