About the Holiday

It’s nearly impossible to imagine the world without the Internet anymore. Today’s holiday commemorates the first internet transmission, which occurred on October 29, 1969. On that day Leonard Kleinrock and Charley Kline, a graduate student at UCLA, attempted to send the word “login” to Bill Duvall at Stanford. While the initial attempt crashed the system after the letter O, the transmission was completed an hour later. As in the invention of the telephone, a simple message ushered in phenomenal change in the way the world disseminates information and how it communicates.  

Nerdy Birdy Tweets

Written by Aaron Reynolds | Illustrated by Matt Davies

Nerdy Birdy and Vulture are best friends even if they are a little…well, a lot…different. While Nerdy Birdy’s favorite thing to do is play video games, Vulture spends her time “snacking on dead things.” There are three things, though, that they have fun doing together. They love to “make fun of each other’s lunch, make silly faces, and take goofy pictures of each other.”

One day while Nerdy Birdy was on his phone, he found a new game called Tweetster. The game was fantastic because you could make lots of friends, play games with them, and “tweet messages and pictures for them all to see.” Vulture thought it all sounded pretty boring even though she tried to sound supportive. In an hour Nerdy Birdy already had fifty new friends. Over the next few days he gained hundreds of other friends and discovered that some of them were really neat—like a flamingo, an ostrich he played games with, and a puffin from Iceland.

Image copyright Matt Davies, 2017, text copyright Aaron Reynolds, 2017. Courtesy of us.macmillan.com.

Vulture tried to remind Nerdy Birdy that she was pretty cool herself and that she was “dying of boredom.” Nerdy Birdy took note—but only partially because he was too busy looking at all the new stuff on his phone. Eventually, Vulture gave up trying to lure Nerdy Birdy back and flew away. It was nighttime before Nerdy Birdy even noticed. The next day Vulture was back with a surprise: she was now on Tweetster too.

“They tweetstered—TOGETHER!—all morning.” Then at lunch they stopped playing and had fun like they used to. But after lunch when they went back to tweetstering, Vulture discovered a shocking picture. Nerdy Birdy had tweeted a pic of Vulture eating an old chicken leg with the caption from @NerdyBirdy that read: “@Vulturegirl is a messy eater. She eats dead things. EWWWWWWW!!” When Vulture showed him her phone, though, Nerdy Birdy was nonchalant. He thought it was funny, that’s all. But Vulture was embarrassed and upset that Nerdy Birdy hadn’t thought about her feelings.

Image copyright Matt Davies, 2017, text copyright Aaron Reynolds, 2017. Courtesy of us.macmillan.com.

Vulture flew off, and this time she hadn’t return even after a week had passed. Nerdy Birdy didn’t know what to do. He decided to ask all of his new friends for advice. He waited and waited, but no one tweeted back. It took a whole day before anyone answered, and even then he got only three responses. @Puffinstuff wondered what Nerdy Birdy expected him to do about it since he lived in Iceland; @Ostrich49 thought the situation was pretty funny and offered an LOL; and @Pinkflamingo7 suggested Nerdy Birdy was a bird brain.

While these replies were unhelpful in solving Nerdy Birdy’s problem, they were “super-duper helpful” in another way. Nerdy Birdy closed his game and took off. He flew everywhere looking for Vulture and finally found her in an oak tree. He landed on a nearby branch and began to apologize. Vulture listened and then asked, “‘What about your five hundred Tweetster friends?’ Nerdy Birdy shrugged. ‘One real live you is worth a thousand Tweetster friends,’” he said. So now Nerdy Birdy and Vulture are back to being best friends. Some days they do what Nerdy Birdy wants, and some days they do what Vulture wants. “And some days they even get together…and Tweet!” at the top of their lungs.

Image copyright Matt Davies, 2017, text copyright Aaron Reynolds, 2017. Courtesy of us.macmillan.com.

Aaron Reynolds’ sweet Nerdy Birdy is back and just trying to fit in with the Internet crowd on Tweetster. There’s so much fun and so many friends to be had! But when Nerdy Birdy gets caught up in the impersonal world where someone’s joke is another one’s hurt, he learns the true meaning of friendship. Reynolds’ relationship and dialogue between two opposites who happen to be best friends rings true as Vulture finds her friend drifting away but tries to stay supportive and even join in. Reynold’s humor highlights Nerdy Birdy’s obliviousness to Vulture’s feelings, allowing readers to understand that their actions sometimes have far-reaching consequences. The two birds’ agreement to compromise is a wonderful example of true friendship, and children will cheer when Vulture and Nerdy Birdy go back to being besties.

Image copyright Matt Davies, 2017, text copyright Aaron Reynolds, 2017. Courtesy of us.macmillan.com.

Matt Davies’ dry wit is on full display from the cover—where Nerdy Birdy’s phone has a persona of its own—through to the end where the body of a dead raccoon is discreetly covered up by a text box. In between, Davies’ squiggly lines and crosshatch style draw two of the cutest birds you’ll ever see. While Vulture may be a scavenger, she likes to eat her meals from a Hello Birdy lunchbox, and Nerdy Birdy’s oversized glasses reflect his owlish capacity for wisdom.

When Nerdy Birdy hides behind his phone as he plays game after game with his new friends, the camera and banana logo on the back are transformed into a mask that hints at the changes Nerdy Birdy is undergoing. As Nerdy Birdy collects friends, the pages become wallpapered in more and more Tweetster friend notification announcements to show his growing number of followers. Readers will giggle at the dead snacks here and there and recognize all the references to texting and game playing that make this story a modern cautionary tale.

Nerdy Birdy Tweets is a timely friendship story that entertains while it enlightens, which makes it a book kids will Like on their home bookshelves and in their classrooms.

Ages 4 – 8

Roaring Brook Press, 2017 | ISBN 978-1626721289

Discover more about Aaron Reynolds and his books on his website

To learn more about Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Matt Davies and his work, visit his website.

You’ll find a fun Nerdy Birdy Tweets Activity Package from Macmillan Publishers here.

Internet Day Activity

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The Internet has added so many new words and definitions of old ones to our language. Search for twenty-two Internet-based words in this printable Trendy Trending Word Search Puzzle. Here’s the Solution!

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