With Just One Wing

During a “summer of curveballs,” an adopted boy draws parallels between his own life and that of the injured, abandoned bird he rescues in this emotionally grounded tale of family, love, and perseverance by Woods (When Winter Robeson Came). Twelve-year-old Coop is ready to spend summer break playing video games at G-Pop and Nana’s house and scoring three-pointers for his youth league basketball team. But G-Pop’s newfound enthusiasm for bird-watching gets Coop and his friend Zandi hooked on the hobby. Things take a literal dive when Coop suffers a concussion and broken arm after falling out of a tree while investigating mockingbird eggs in a nest. After discovering that one of the nestlings has only one wing, Coop and Zandi rescue it and educate themselves about its care and behavior. They also learn that they can’t legally keep the chick, leading Coop to realizations of his own. Woods presents Coop’s ponderings about his birth mother, and how he fits into his adoptive family, with tenderness and sincerity in this smoothly plotted story that captures the fine-tuned rhythms of Coop’s busy, engaged, and musical family. Characters read as racially diverse. Ages 10–up. (May)