Hawk, I'm Your Brother

It's kind of unusual for a Byrd Baylor book in that there's actually a storyline. It's a prose poem about a boy who really wants to fly, so he captures a baby hawk and raises it in a cage for a season. The hawk clearly wants out the whole time, and then he sets the hawk free at the end.

It really doesn't need to be a Native American story. It kind of makes me think a little bit of "My Side of the Mountain", except apparently this kid fails at raising a hawk. The hawk in this book is magical or something and can survive on its own after being raised by a human, as well as having some kind of seemingly supernatural connection to the child at the end. Baylor's text just goes on and on, using far more words than necessary to tell this story. It's not bad, it's just boring.