The soft watercolor illustrations in this book are stunningly gorgeous, depicting dawn, day, dusk, and night in the marshland. The text provides a gently rhyming, sing-song accompaniment to the beautiful art, using simple AABB rhymes and light alliteration ("where otters seek sunshine on fat fallen logs" for example) to describe Redwing's day and night in the marsh, and all the other creatures and plants of the marsh that share their home with the titular bird. The educational section at the end, providing photos and info about the animals portrayed in the story, is a nice touch. A beautiful addition to a young reader's bookshelf.

Thank you to NetGalley and Black Rose Writing for the advance review copy!

The only fault to be had with this book is that it might be too old-fashioned to become a success. You'll see the obvious sarcasm in that sentence, of course, for old-fashioned (at least in the manner here) could never be a fault. With a gentle, lullaby-styled lope to her rhyming text, our author takes us from dawn to dusk and beyond in a marshland peppered with birds and other wildlife, all the while returning to the red-winged blackbird at the centre of our focus. And the engaging verse is only matched by the watercoloured artwork, that really succeeds in giving us a sense of place, life, and all that the book needed. Here the animals and birds have character, the water-edge plant-life has texture, and the landscape gives its own atmosphere by dint of not knowing where water should end and land or sky begin. I'd raise an eyebrow to the end-matter, where post-scripts are a bit too personal, and an attempt at educational notes doesn't begin to cover all the biological subjects of the heart of the book, but I'd raise a glass to the success of everything else. I hope it does find a market for its quiet, old-fashioned classiness. Four and a half stars.