Bastien is eight years old, and his mother is ill. She often has what his father and grandparents call “episodes.” She screams and fights, scratches and spits, and has to be carted away to specialized clinics for frequent treatments. Bastien doesn’t like it when she goes, because when she comes home, she isn’t the same. She has no feelings, no desires, and not much interest in him. According to the doctors, Bastien’s mother suffers from “bipolar disorder with schizophrenic tendencies,” but he prefers to imagine her as a comic-book heroine, like Jean Grey, who may become Dark Phoenix and explode in a superhuman fury at any moment. Based on the creator’s own childhood experiences, The Parakeet is the story of a boy whose only refuge from life’s harsh realities lies in his imagination. In his eyes, we see the confusion and heartache he feels as he watches his mother’s illness worsen and the treatments fail. Through his eyes, we see how mental illness can both tear families apart and reaffirm the bonds of love. Poignant yet playful, The Parakeet follows Bastien’s struggle to accept the mother he has while wishing for the mother he needs.

A Best Book of 2020 at Lit Hub, Electric Literature, and Refinery29 A Best Book of Summer at Vulture, Refinery29, Yahoo! Life, Alma, Subway Book Review, and Lit Hub A Best Book of the Month at Entertainment Weekly, Hello Giggles, and PopSugar EDITORS' CHOICE AT THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW LONGLISTED FOR THE 2021 CARNEGIE MEDAL and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize "Miraculous: spry and mordant, with sentences that lull you with their rhythms, then twist suddenly and sting." —Lauren Groff, author of Florida "A twisting, strange delight, Parakeet shimmers a soft and generous light on the darkest of a woman's innermost thoughts." —Kristen Iversen, Refinery29 Acclaimed author of 2 A.M. at the Cat's Pajamas Marie-Helene Bertino's Parakeet is a darkly funny and warm-hearted novel about a young woman whose dead grandmother (in the form of a parakeet) warns her not to marry and sends her out to find an estranged loved one. The week of her wedding, The Bride is visited by a bird she recognizes as her dead grandmother because of the cornflower blue line beneath her eyes, her dubious expression, and the way she asks: What is the Internet? Her grandmother is a parakeet. She says not to get married. She says: Go and find your brother. In the days that follow, The Bride's march to the altar becomes a wild and increasingly fragmented, unstable journey that bends toward the surreal and forces her to confront matters long buried. A novel that does justice to the hectic confusion of becoming a woman today, Parakeet asks and begins to answer the essential questions. How do our memories make, cage, and free us? How do we honor our experiences and still become our strongest, truest selves? Who are we responsible for, what do we owe them, and how do we allow them to change? Urgent, strange, warm-hearted, and sly, Parakeet is ribboned with joy, fear, and an inextricable thread of real love. It is a startling, unforgettable, life-embracing exploration of self and connection.

The classic story from Nobel Prize winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer about a family who adopts a parakeet during Hanukkah, fully illustrated and in picture book form for the very first time. When young David and Mama and Papa are celebrating Hanukkah one frosty winter evening in Brooklyn, Papa sees a parakeet sitting on the window ledge. He lets the parakeet in and everyone is delighted to find that it speaks Yiddish. They name it Dreidel and it becomes part of their family. Many years later, when David is in college, he is at a party one night and tells Dreidel's story-only to discover that Zelda, a young woman at the party, owned the bird herself as a child. Papa and Mama are worried that they will have to give their beloved pet back, but then David and Zelda decide to get married after college, and everyone agrees that they should take Dreidel with them as they start their own family.

A little girl is convinced that her cat ate her parakeet. Where else would it be? She shouts, she accuses, and she laments her loss. "He was singing a tune just an hour ago. Did you eat him? I want to know!" In the end, her cat shows her that the bird has been on her head the whole time. But wait . . . now where's her pet mouse? This sweet and silly picture book, with rhyming text and adorable art, will have children laughing through the final page.

An entertaining leveled two-part approach to reading featuring imperfect rhyme using simple sentences, whimsical rhyming stories, and a riddle.

A 2019 Buckeye Children's Award Nominee A little girl can't find her parakeet—her kitty must have eaten it! Right? Where else would it have gone? It was just here! She shouts, she accuses, and she laments her loss. But her cat might be trying to tell her something . . . With rhyming text and adorable art, Did You Eat the Parakeet? by Mark Iacolina is a sweet and silly picture book that will have children laughing through the final page.

This easy reader contains only 44 different words, repeated often to help the young reader develop word recognition and interest in reading.

There was only the bird book to tell her story. She left it as unfinished as her life seemed to be. The question of who she was led me to begin searching for the answers. Years ago I should have started searching while she was still alive; however, I did not really know about her until it was too late. I refused to have her life and legacy forgotten, and yet I was so slow in acting. I suppose there are those who would say that I should not invade the territory of one who is already gone. However, it has always been in me to find out the answers, and so for that reason, Alma's story must be told. She left her story in phrases she composed. She left her story in the pieces of artwork she created. She left her story in the memories of those who knew her.

A practical guide to caring for parakeets that covers purchasing, cages and maintenance, food, health care and diseases, behavior, toys, talking, and breeding, and includes a section on wild parakeets in Australia.