Knowing the Name of a Bird

What’s in a name? The characteristics of a bird cannot be conveyed by the names we give them—or by words in general. According to Yolen, birds are given both scientific and popular names, such as robin, hawk, peacock, or swan, but neither name captures anything about what the bird is really like. The individuality of a bird, such as its color, or more tactile qualities, such as “The dinosaur feet, / crooked and brown, / or the talons with / nails as hard as / an old man’s,” are not conveyed by the name we give it. A bird’s name can’t convey its movement in space or the drama of a peacock’s outspread tail or the nature of its flight or even if it flies at all. (Picture the emu or the ostrich.) A concluding quote from noted physicist Richard Feynman sums it up: “You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing about the bird.” The idea is interesting, and van der Linde’s illustrations are clean, clear, and attractive, but in exploring negation the text offers little for curious, concrete-thinking young readers. It’s thematically consistent but also maddening that the book doesn’t consistently identify the birds pictured. The closing note discusses recording bird song but then shrugs away the value of those recordings. An interesting thought experiment, but it doesn’t quite take off.