During a one-month period when they are not allowed to play on the Big Hill (a punishment for having begged for food at the Ekstrom house atop the hill!), Betsy, Tacy, and Tib decide that they will learn how to fly. They begin by leaping off of relatively low-lying structures — a horse hitching block, a porch railing — while waving their arms in the air. “It feels just like jumping,” Tib comments, with trademark practicality. But the game gets scary and a lot more real when they size up the big maple in Betsy’s backyard and prepare to leap off its lofty lowest branch.

Tib and Tacy go first, with some trepidation, but when it is Betsy’s turn and she sees how far the branch is from the ground, she hesitates. Rather than jump, she begins to tell a story about three little girls who turned into birds. She spins one of her most charming tales, naming the birds Tibbin, Tacin, and Betsin, sending them flying through Deep Valley trees, hills, and clouds. When the birds’ mothers and siblings begin to weep with worry, the birds decide to change back into girls, which Betsy demonstrates by climbing down from the tree.

In a gorgeous book called The Woman Who Turned Children Into Birds, written by David Almond, illustrated by Laura Carlin, published in 2022, a magical woman transforms the children in town into all types of birds. The children experience the joys and freedom of flight. As in Betsy’s story, the parents are initially, and understandably, terrified. But as they begin to question their fears, they transcend them, and join their children in flight. For flight, it turns out, requires freedom from limitations that are often self imposed. And the sky above the town becomes a festival of color and song.

Later, Tib notes that in the course of telling the story, Betsy had forgotten to fly from the tree! Tacy, however, knows that it was no oversight. Betsy had been afraid to jump off of the branch and had invented the story as a distraction device, while Tacy and Tib had gamely taken the leap. As Tib makes a joke about Betsy having forgotten to take her turn to fly, Betsy looks over at Tacy, warily. But Tacy refuses to meet Betsy’s glance. She “was looking the other way hard” (p. 27, Harper Trophy paperback edition, 1993).

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Source: Almond, D. 2022. The Woman Who Turned Children Into Birds. Penguin. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/716077/the-woman-who-turned-children-into-birds-by-david-almond-illustrated-by-laura-carlin/