CB the Croissant Bird

by William Armitage & Wendy Barry, Illustrated by Shelley K. Shaw

Tori, Arthur and I have been enjoying this lovely book together over the last few weeks and we wanted to share what we thought about it with you.

CB the Croissant Bird is a lovely (and mostly true!) story about a very friendly catbird and who takes a liking to croissants for breakfast. He shares the morning delicacy with the Potters and goes on to raise a family in their back garden, introducing the next generation of croissant birds to the morning routine!

Arthur particularly enjoys the noise that CB makes – we went and looked it up after reading because we are not familiar with the species and wanted to know more. There followed a lot of fun as we all tried to do catbird impressions along with the videos we found!

Tori’s favourite part of the story is when Mr & Mrs Potter discover the catbird nest and are peering into the hedge only for CB to appear behind them.

We all love birds and wildlife and we enjoyed learning more about a new species together through the book and afterwards – CB is a Grey Catbird which is an American member of the Thrush family. They sound very sweet and we decided CB sounded a bit like the robins in our garden who are much braver than all the other birds when it comes to taking food from near to us.

This book is great for reading aloud and sharing together but is also great for little readers who are growing in confidence. Arthur likes to re-read his favourite bits to himself after we have read it through together.

The Smalls are particularly charmed by the fact that CB is a catbird because we often call our kitten Amber a birdcat as she likes to perch on people’s shoulders like a parrot. They want to go see a catbird so they have completed the set!!