Birdie’s Bargain begins with a prayer. It’s a prayer that many of us have prayed when we reached the end of ourselves.
When ten-year old Birdie’s dad is stationed in Iraq, she is distraught. She tries making sense of the chaos surrounding her and the questions within her. As she sifts through her tumultuous feelings, Birdie asks a poignant, heartrending question:
“Why couldn’t God roll history backward as well as forward? Why couldn’t He go back to September 10, 2001, and fix things so the next day was an ordinary sunny day in the fall and not the start of two wars and horribleness?”
In a prayerful plea, Birdie decides to make a bargain with God:
If he will protect her dad, then she will love and serve God forever.
When Birdie sees light pour through her window and onto the floor, she feels optimistic that God has not only heard her prayer, but that he will keep his end of the bargain.
As the story progresses, Birdie strives to be faithful to God. With the best intentions, she tries to be helpful to her family. She befriends a difficult neighbor. She tries sharing Jesus’s love with others. She’ll do whatever it takes to keep her dad safe. She just hopes that God himself is safe.
I thought of Lucy Pevensie’s question to Mr. and Mrs. Beaver in C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe:
“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.
“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver. “. . . Who said anything about safe? ’Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”
If you’re familiar with Paterson’s other stories like Bridge to Terabithia, Jacob Have I Loved, and The Great Gilly Hopkins, you know she writes you to the top of a cliff and nearly pushes you off the edge. She leaves you breathless, wondering what will happen next, and if the ending will be worth it.
In an interview with Read-Aloud Revival (episode 81), Paterson spoke of the tension in her books:
I don’t mean to leave a child hopeless at the end of a book because I’m not a hopeless person; I’m a person of profound hope. Your hope is not that nothing bad will ever happen but that there’s somehow you can survive; not only survive but grow, and learn, and triumph through the hard takes of life.
This is the mark of Paterson’s stories. She exposes the complexities of life, but she doesn’t stop there. She encourages the reader to press on through the stubborn, painful areas and to grow through them.
Birdie has to press on and grow through several areas: her dad’s assignment, moving to a new town, starting a new school, navigating new friendships, and facing her own fears and failings.
But what happens when it seems like God isn’t keeping his end of the bargain? What happens when our faith is hanging by a thread?
Like Birdie, we want to know that God is with us. We want to know that he will be God and take care of us. That he will fight for us and we only need to remain still (Exodus 14:14). Yet, as is true in Paterson’s novels and throughout Scripture—this often looks differently than we expect.
Some days it’s simply his presence with us in the unplanned spaces of life.
Birdie is forced to face her own fears and failings, her own tears and doubts. She steps into stories of war, poverty, and addiction. And as she does, God opens new doors—inviting Birdie to look beyond her bargain, into the gift of faith.
Birdie’s Bargain is an authentic, honest middle-grade reader. It’s a reminder that God doesn’t always show up in the ways we ask him to, but he does indeed show up.
For Parents/Caregivers/Teachers:
- Paterson cleverly drops literary references throughout Birdie’s Bargain. Encourage your child to watch for these references and check out the books at your local library or bookstore.
- Birdie writes in a diary. Invite your child to start a diary of their own where they can share their thoughts, doubts, questions, hopes, prayers, etc.
- In case you have a sensitive reader, this book touches on heavy themes such as abuse, addiction, death, and war. Provide guidance and support as needed.
- Review: Birdie’s Bargain - July 17, 2024
- Keep Turning the Pages - June 17, 2024
- Impromptu Picnics - June 3, 2024
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