THE FAR-FLUNG ADVENTURES OF HOMER THE HUMMER

The title isn’t all that’s wordy in this new publisher’s debut offering, but Reynolds’s tale of a ruby-throated hummingbird’s journey from a Costa Rican rain forest to a favorite garden on the U.S.’s eastern seaboard will leave young readers wowed by the tiny bird’s endurance and toughness. Along the way, Homer faces dangers as diverse as a hungry frog, hundreds of miles of open water and a very cold night. (“That bird was in a deep sleep called torpor and he woke up,” a man explains after the seemingly dead hummingbird takes wing from his pocket.) He eventually hooks up with both an artist who keeps the feeder outside her window filled, and with his similarly migratory mate Ruby. Like Gay W. Holland’s art in April Pulley Sayre’s The Hungry Hummingbird (2001), McClung’s soft-lined paintings create verdant natural settings, while capturing the hummer’s jewel-like colors and zippy energy. Plenty of child appeal here, in topic and presentation both. (Picture book/nonfiction. 6-8)