The Best of Both Nests

The Best of Both Nests

By Jane Clarke

Illustrated by Anne Kennedy

K-3^rd graders

4/5 ****

This is the story of a bird whose parents get divorced, and how he deals with having parents in two different nests.  On another level, it is about creating meaningful friendships and accepting each others’ differences. 

While this book isn’t called “Divorce” it is pretty clearly a metaphor for divorce in our society today.  The parent birds are “Clattering too much, and just aren’t singing the same song anymore”.  The story explores lots of aspects of divorce, and different feelings that kids often have when their parents get divorced.  So, on that level, it would be a good book to read when trying to reach out to those kids who may be going through a divorce at home.  It is a safe way to introduce the idea of divorce, and it encourages kids to help each other deal with those things as well as to accept everyone and all different kinds of families.

I think using this book to talk about the purpose of writing and writing towards a specific audience could be interesting.  Because the purpose of this book and the intended audience are pretty clear, this would be a good book to use to introduce discussion on those topics, probably for older students.  Just getting kids thinking about the purpose of writing and of reading books, as well as writing for different audiences is a great way to get kids thinking about both reading and writing and why it is important.