Saving Jemima: Life and Love with a Hard-Luck Jay

By Julie Zickefoose

For fans of Wesley the Owl and The Soul of an Octopus, the story of a sick baby bird nursed back to health and into the wild by renowned writer/artist Julie Zickefoose.

When Jemima, a young orphaned blue jay, is brought to wildlife rehabilitator Julie Zickefoose, she is a virtually tailless, palm-sized bundle of gray-blue fluff. But she is starved and very sick. Julie’s constant care brings her around, and as Jemima is raised for eventual release, she takes over the house and the rest of the author's summer.
 
Shortly after release, Jemima turns up with a deadly disease. But medicating a free-flying wild bird is a challenge. When the PBS show Nature expresses interest in filming Jemima, Julie must train her to behave on camera, as the bird gets ever wilder. Jemima bonds with a wild jay, stretching her ties with the family. Throughout, Julie grapples with the fallout of Jemima’s illness, studies molt and migration, and does her best to keep Jemima strong and wild. She falls hard for this engaging, feisty and funny bird, a creative muse and source of strength through the author’s own heartbreaking changes.

Emotional and honest, Saving Jemima is a universal story of the communion between a wild creature and the human chosen to raise it.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Sep 10, 2019
• ISBN: 9781328518965

Julie Zickefoose

Julie Zickefoose, the author/illustrator of Baby Birds (2016), The Bluebird Effect (2012), and Letters from Eden (2006), is a contributing editor to Bird Watcher’ s Digest. She lives with her family on an eighty-acre sanctuary in Appalachian Ohio.

Reviews for Saving Jemima

[juliestielstra · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What a lovely book - in every sense. It is a compact, colorful, beautifully produced object: just a comfortable size to hold and read, on classy paper stock, and illuminated throughout with Zickefoose's elegant paintings and drawings, plus charming photos of Jemima the blue jay and members of her human foster family. I so often wish that art-type books I've read recently had some decent illustrations; this one was a joy.

Those of us who follow Zickefoose on Facebook or through her blog already know some of this story, but here she gets room to expand on the year she spent nursing, coaching, watching, cheering, photographing, drawing and loving the tough little blue jay she had rescued as a sickly 11-day-old fluff nugget. In warm-hearted prose, she tells us all about the intellectual and emotional ride you get when you do what she does: devote your life to saving and releasing wildlife in need... and having to say good-bye. The tale of Jemima - a delightful, charismatic, demanding little character - is woven through other strands of Zickefoose's life: her near-adult children who are themselves preparing to leave the "nest," her marriage, her aging dog, her own enmeshment in relationships with wild animals - some of which made my heart ache. This all adds up to more than just another human wild animal story. For birders, there is a wealth of information to be relished about feeding, behaviors, and personalities (Brown Thrashers are described as "catlike and comical" - perfect!). A recipe for "Zick Dough," her own particular brew for winter feeding, is provided. A particularly gorgeous plate is a circle of portraits of the individual jays she knew by sight, depicting the subtle markings and hues that made each one unique.

A wonderful mix of birds, humans, arts, words, and love.