When I see ___, I think ___.

When I see ___, I feel ___.

I see new love and longing fueled with such intense desire that I’d say I’m a bird, can fly, and claim the chickadee’s songs as mine. - Susan

These pages make me think of starting school and falling in love. We start empty slate-ish. They're both processes and things we go through in life. I thought of incompleteness. I’m seeking love or completeness. And thought of the whole and this firmament that school or love. There is who you are, and this structure…and then it’s a costume. - anonymous

I see these drawings as a metaphor for emptiness and the need to become who I am and learn. - anonymous

I saw the emptiness and the need to learn through loving as becoming. - anonymous

In the first image, I see the emptiness as a beginning. I see the structure of school and the love as what we’ll cling to. - Susan

When I saw the cage I thought about when I want to connect I sometimes become someone I am not. With people, with longing, even dreams. I think about how I am driven by other’s wishes for me. - Susan

When I saw how the boy created his costume and all that went into it, the costume became personal moments when unresolved experiences contrive into behaviors begging to be seen, heard and loved. - Susan

I felt strongly on this page about my selfishness and how I can focus so much on one thing that my back is literally turned away from someone I care about deeply. Again, Sylvia only has eyes for birds. And that can be literally true in my life with birds, but it extends to many more areas of bird watching. This makes me cry every time. When my partner and I go bird watching I take pictures of birds and he may only take 3 or 4 pictures and they’re of me. I admire his love. He’s way better at love that I am. He gets way more out of me watching birds and as much as I get seeing the most extraordinary bird. It’s amazing to be the object of such a love and really humbling and that I don’t return it the same way. It makes me really happy and it makes me cry. - anonymous

When I noticed the words didn't match with the drawing, I thought about how often my words do not match what I experience. - anonymous

When I saw the illustrations of all the birds and then the parts of the bird, I noticed the separate wing on this page. I thought about how my whole life I’ve wanted to fly. Literally. I wanted to be an astronaut and was told I couldn’t be that (because I was a girl) by a teacher. And today, I have an insight. My retelling of that story over the years keeps the focus on my angst and a moment someone said I couldn’t. I believed and submitted to those words. This book, THIS PAGE, woke me up. - Susan

I thought of obsessions and how birding can be so consuming for the artist to drawing in such detail. I thought of obsession in learning and I thought about the differences between the two of them. - anonymous

I thought about the empty bird and the bird with no detail and I wonder and don’t know what those drawings mean. - anonymous

This page makes me think a lot. I like the contrast between the simplicity of the drawing of Sylvia and the level of detail in the drawings of the birds. - anonymous

The balancing when he’s on the pyramid near the end of the book, which is really a little rock, is an exaggeration. I think about how when I am in love, passionate love about someone, something, or an event, I tend to exaggerate what I see and feel. - Susan

I’m smiling at this and the possibility of that huge costume because I love a good costume and this felt like I would want to put it on for the day, not like the boy, but the trying on of a costume and to go out be someone for a day. An escapism and then take it off. - anonymous

When I saw the rain page…I thought about the stillness and how it came at the end of the book and it was a heavy rain and the character was just not so inflated but more standing in it. I had a feeling of being still when I sit in my chair in the morning and that being still is a way I can see who I am. What I mean is that I’m aware of my thoughts and feelings like birdboy saying he smells like a dog, musty and rank. It’s like seeing my skeletons and gunk when I gaze into clear water. As much as I don’t want to smell the rank or see its images, I know looking is what helps me learn and change. - anonymous

When I saw that he didn’t want to take off his costume that he really believed he was a bird that he was this, I felt like…stumble…that I pretend and I don’t what to be who I’m not, but it’s hard to do. I know what an effort it is to take off a big, heavy, sticky costume—the costume of who I am not—because it’s more comfortable. I’ve been wearing it a long time. And that I want to cling to what I think I am instead of who I am. - anonymous

Image: Reading The Day I Became A Bird by Ingrid Chabbert. Raúl Nieto Guridi (Illustrator).