One of us actually hates a cliffhanger like Private Peaceful. We really liked the ending (spoiler alert) because we love a happy ever after. We are definitely the youngest children who can read this book, definitely not for anyone under 10. We got to think more about race issues as well which some of us enjoyed. Some of us have experienced death of family members as Jewell did and it was a chance to think and this and learn stuff. Others of us liked it because it was serious and we got to learn stuff. Only one of didn't like it because they found it just too serious. Most of us adored everything about this book, from the amazing writing, to the setting, to the characters.

We like to read books with characters in them that look like us, not always white. We also found awesome, we related to the characters especially because we are a very multicultural group and our world in London is very multicultural. The main character in the book Jewel is half Jamaican, a quarter Mexican and a quarter white. Even though we don't really go for emotional books normally, this could be the start of us reading serious books now we are 10 and 11 years old. Some of us found Bird to be a hypnotising read and wanted to read it over again and again. One of us is not in to reading any book that has everyone alive in it, so particularly like this book because someone who is dead is so much a part of it. Some of us are interested in ghosts so we really liked the duppie angle and and the grandad's strange superstitious behaviour. We aren't going to give the ending away but the main boy character (also called John at first, like Jewel's brother) is thought to actually be a duppie by Jewels' Grandfather.

It's not exactly scary but the characters do talk about ghosts (called dupes) a lot.

We would describe the book as strange and mysterious. Some of us found the book boring at first but actually it became more interesting and we got to understand it more, so that's why we liked it. Not all of us read books like this usually, more going for adventure and horror but we were mainly gripped by Bird and in the end found it was full of adventure and mystery.

Bird by crystal chan summary