Violet Mackerel has her heart set on a blue china bird that the man who doesn’t smile has for sale. He sells them at the same market where her Mama sells the woolly things she knits. Violet starts making a list of ways she might get the bird, and her ideas range from the simple (ask for it for her birthday) to the outrageously complex (go on a game show and win first place; trade the prize for the blue china bird). Violet lives with her Mama, her sister Nicola, a teenager, and her brother Dylan, an almost-teenager. All Nicola wants is a haircut from someone named Mojo. All Dylan wants is a camera. And all Violet wants is that blue china bird. Just when it seems Violet’s a bit too precocious, she does something spectacularly childlike that reins the story in from the edge of sweetness (one particularly awesome crying fit comes to mind) in Anna Branford’s charming book for newly independent readers. (Ages 6–8)