Shig says his mother had raised him alone until he was four. She found work cooking and cleaning for a rich family. They made her live in their home. And so shig lived with a baby sitter most of the time, except on sundays. When it got dark, she would walk him back to the baby sitter's house. Shig: Seeing the baby magpie who couldn't get back to its mother meant something to him.
When Shigeru Yabu was 9 years old, he and his family were incarcerated at Heart Mountain Internment Camp, along with thousands of other Japanese and Japanese American families. One day, Shigeru discovered a baby magpie that had fallen out of its nest. He named her Maggie. “That bird walked up my arm all the way to my shoulder, and we looked at each other, eye to eye.”
Shigeru Yabu’s book is Hello Maggie!
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