Strange Birds of Flannery O'Connor

Amy Alznauer lives in Chicago with her husband, two children, a dog, a parakeet, sometimes chicks, and a part-time fish, but, as of today, no elephants or peacocks. Check back.Her writing has won the Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction, the Christopher Award, and the SCBWI-Illinois Laura Crawford Memorial Mentorship, and her essays and poetry have appeared in collections and literary journals including The Bellingham Review, Creative Nonfiction and River Teeth.She has an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Pittsburgh. She teaches calculus and number theory classes at Northwestern University. She is the managing editor for the SCBWI-IL Prairie Wind. And she is the writer-in-residence at St. Gregory the Great, where she has a little office in a big building with a bad internet connection, so she actually gets some work done (in theory).Ping Zhu is a freelance illustrator who has worked with clients big and small, won some awards based on the work she did for aforementioned clients, attracted new clients with shiny awards, and is hoping to maintain her livelihood in Brooklyn by repeating that cycle.

This picture-book biography, beginning in Flannery O’Connor’s childhood and ending with her untimely death, shines a light on her love of strangeness. With its memorable opening line, “Right from the start young Flannery took a shine to chickens,” the book celebrates her fascination with life’s peculiarities—and death. The exaggerated scale and off-kilter perspectives of Zhu’s illustrations align with the book’s focus on eccentricity...The thoughtful design—at 12 inches square, as outsized as its subject—includes a type chosen because its designer, like O’Connor, had a love for drawing birds. A striking, quirky ode to a unique vision. —Kirkus Reviews