THE PONY AND THE STARLING

Nature takes center stage in this quiet, memorable story of companionship.

On the vast plains, a young girl accompanied by a dog feeds a gray pony in a summer pasture. One day the sky is spangled with a murmuration of starlings. Though the girl’s mother muses that “You never see just one,” when the flock moves on, a single bird remains. The girl asks the starling where the other birds have gone, but naturally, it doesn’t answer. Pony and starling spend their days eating and resting together. When a winter blizzard looms, the girl leads the pony to the barn, but despite her urging, the bird won’t enter. After the storm, the starling is nowhere to be found. Months pass, and the murmuration returns, “swirling around a dancing, prancing pony” in the spring field. Then the flock leaves—“all but one.” Is it the same bird? We want to believe so. Imbued with ambiguity, the text is gracefully eloquent, using human activities—the girl’s chores, her storm preparations—to anchor the natural melody. The tone is matched by the calm, watercolorlike images, foregrounding the soft-edged figures against the sweeping sky, punctuated by the black-and-white dog and the girl’s dark hair framing her pale face. Against the spare, neutral backgrounds, the jet-black bird seems to lift off the page.

A lovely, lyrical depiction of friendship.