Azizi and the little blue bird

Azizi and his family live in a country under tyrannical rule. Every house is required to have huge, scowling portraits hung of the despots Tih and Reni. In the Land of the Crescent Moon, "the walls have ears." The cruel dictators decree all the blue birds in the realm must be locked up in a palace courtyard cage. As the greedy oppressors loom large and make more demands, the citizens shrink. Azizi becomes "small as a pine nut in a glass of mint tea." A lone tiny bird escapes capture and lands on Azizi's window ledge, tweeting empowering words of resistance: "It's time." Gathering jasmine flowers into a long garland and brandishing his mother's sewing needle like a sword, the child leads an uprising on the back of a blue bird. Filled with wordless spreads of delicate, blooming white flowers and trailing green foliage, De Leeuw's warmly-hued illustrations are rich with atmospheric details. Originally published in Flemish, this allegorical fairy tale is inspired by the Tunisian Jasmine Revolution. An incisive social justice picture book.

In this tale translated from Flemish, a diminutive hero takes on larger-than-life villainy. Tan-skinned Azizi lives in the Land of the Crescent Moon--a kingdom shaded by citrus trees, fragranced by aromatic jasmine, and inspired by Revolution-era Tunisia. Tyrannical leaders Tih and Reni rule with an ever-growing avarice. Intent on stripping the land of its beauty for superfluous self-gain, each day they demand increasingly sumptuous feasts, more luxurious wares, and the capture of "every last blue bird there was." Self-enriched but never content, the pair grow larger and larger while their subjects shrink--effectively illustrating the effects of corruption-borne oppression--until one day, a newly teensy Azizi receives an avian caller, a wily bird who's escaped captivity and who arrives with an urgent call to action. Prepared to answer, Azizi wields a needle as a sword and, together, the courageous duo lead the resistance, taking flight toward the palace with a garland of jasmine in tow. While the trope of physical-largeness-as-villainy can be fraught, and Koubaa's antagonists are characterized by insatiable hunger, the piece deftly avoids conflating fatness with iniquity, instead clearly establishing greed as the obscenity and feting the bravery of responsive action. De Leeuw's scrabbly artwork, Quentin Blake--esque in its stylish charm, lends a grounded whimsy to the piece, while jewel- and saffron-toned detailing evokes a distinct sense of place, serving up a visual feast. The result is a triumph. A lovely and empowering homage to real-life resistance.(Picture book. 5-8) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.