Sun Bird: The Amazing Journey of the Arctic Tern
Written and Illustrated by Lindsay Moore
Published by Greenwillow Books, An Imprint of HarperCollins, 2025
Arctic terns hold the record for the longest annual migration of any animal. Sun Bird: The Amazing Journey of the Arctic Tern takes readers across oceans, following one family of Arctic terns, each member no heavier than a handful of sand, from the Arctic Circle in the north all the way to Antarctica.
reviews
★ "Natural science at its most visually and verbally lyrical." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
★ "Immersive illustrations capture the brightness of sunny days at sea and the cool depths of the ocean, and there’s a marvelous sense of movement on every spectacular page." -Booklist (starred review)
★ "With soaring lines washed in luminous colors, Moore (Yoshi and the Ocean) traces a year in the life of the arctic tern—an animal that, back matter suggests, may experience more sunlight than any other on Earth. The migrating birds raise their young during the arctic summer, then “follow the sun south” to spend the antarctic spring feeding, molting, and growing new feathers for their return trip to the Arctic—and polar summer. "
-Publisher's Weekly (starred review)
"The text is paced well and manages to be both simple and vivid, with evocative imagery that easily balances the drama of such an epic global journey with the scientific details. The art is also deceptively simple, directly matching the text while cueing readers into the larger ecological world and highlighting the birds’ journey as one of many processes that happen in the natural world annually. " -The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books