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The One About the Blackbird
  • Published: 18 November 2025
  • ISBN: 9781774882665
  • Imprint: Tundra Books
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 40
  • RRP: $45.00

The One About the Blackbird

Formats & editions
EBook
21 Oct 2025
Hardback
18 Nov 2025
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A gorgeous picture book about the connections created through music, and how music can reach loved ones with dementia.

A young boy learns to play guitar from his grandfather, and the one about the blackbird is their favorite song. Years later, the boy visits his grandfather, and while his grandfather doesn't recognize him, now grown-up, he does still remember how to hold a guitar.

A beautiful full circle moment ensues when the boy plays his grandfather their favorite song.

The moving text and dynamic, gorgeous art celebrate the connection that music can create between two people and the joy that music, and the shared love of it, can bring at any age.
  • Published: 18 November 2025
  • ISBN: 9781774882665
  • Imprint: Tundra Books
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 40
  • RRP: $45.00
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About the author

Matt James

MATT JAMES has won many awards for his picture books such as the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, the Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award, the New Mexico Book Award and the Governor General’s Literary Award for Children's Literature. The books he has written include Tadpoles; Nice Try, Charlie!; and his author-illustrator debut The Funeral, which was named a New York Times/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Children's Book. He also illustrated When the Moon Comes by Paul Harbridge; The One About the Blackbird by Melanie Florence; The Stone Thrower by Jael Ealey Richardson; and I’m Afraid, Said the Leaf by Danielle Daniel.
MJ

Also by Matt James

I'm Afraid, Said the Leaf
When the Moon Comes
The Pirate's Bed
See all

Praise for The One About the Blackbird

PRAISE FOR Tadpoles by Matt James:


"Vivid, water-spotted illustrations. . . ." —New York Times

"A tale of father-child bonding full of visual appeal. . . ." —Kirkus Reviews

"[A] thoughtful stream-of-consciousness outing from James. . . . Multimedia art's spattered, stroked textures convey the feel of pages left out in a storm in James's portrait of transition, throughout which the setting and its fluctuating features prove quiet symbols of seasonal and personal transformation. . . ." —STARRED REVIEW, Publishers Weekly

"James's mixed-media illustrations in gouache, acrylics, and collage show both the factual and emotional parts of the text." —The Horn Book