A Gift from the Birds by Caroline Stills

Title: A Gift from the Birds

Author: Caroline Stills

Genre: Contemporary

Publisher: Text Publishing Australia

Published: 29^th July 2025

Format: Paperback

Pages: 192

Price: $16.99

Synopsis: Birds can save people’s lives. You may think that’s a strange thing to say. How can a small animal with wings save a person? But I know they can. It happened to me.

When Millie was nine years old her mum got sick, very sick. And now, on the night of Millie’s tenth birthday party, things are getting serious. Millie sits on the back step of her house, worried and upset, and two shiny black crows fly into the yard, catching her attention.

Do they just want some of the cheeseburger she’s attempting to eat? Or are they visiting for some other reason?

Before long Millie starts to find mysterious objects in the garden. And the crows are often there when she comes home from school.

What are they trying to tell her? And can they help her as she faces losing her mum?

Caroline Stills’s debut novel, A Gift from the Birds, is a sensitive, heartfelt story about loss and grief, and finding comfort in unexpected places.

~*~

Ten-year-old Millie is going through something that nobody else in her class has ever gone through. Her mum is sick, and has been for a year with cancer. But her mum is determined to make Millie’s tenth birthday as special as possible. Even though it ends in tragedy, with Millie’s mum back in hospital. As Millie worries about her mum, two birds arrive in the tree in her backyard. When Millie feeds them, they start leaving her gifts, little treasures that keep Millie focused on something else other than facing losing her mum.

Caroline Still’s debut novel with Text Publishing, and winner of the 2024 Text Prize grapples with grief and loss at a young age. It explores how one family deals with illness and death, the ways people act around them, and gives a glimpse into their lives before and after. It’s a quiet and gentle novel that explores what it feels like to be a child facing huge changes in life. Changes that most people won’t face until many years later. Millie is struggling to find comfort and talk to people. Her dad is lost as well, and Millie doesn’t know how to talk about her grief. She doesn’t know what to say, or who to speak to. So, she lets her art and connection with the birds speak for her. She pulls into herself because everyone else has moved on. She feels alone and trapped in her grief.

The delicate issues the book deals with childhood grief, family grief, and community feelings as everyone around Millie and her father do what they think is right, or seem to move on. Millie’s sense of isolation and not knowing where she fits in, feeling alone and being unable to put her feelings into words reverberates throughout the novel. It’s quietly traumatic and hopeful. The kind of hope where you’re hoping the outcome will change, yet where you can see what is to come. What Millie will have to face. It’s a reminder that we don’t have to face grief and tragedy alone at any age, and that sometimes working through things in our own way is what we need. We can get help when we need it too, and the things we lose will always find a way of coming back to us in the end. Another wonderfully emotionally charged book from Text Publishing.