"Summer And Bird" is a fantasy novel by Katherine Catmull.
It follows two sisters, Summer and Bird, who embark on a quest to the fantasy world of Down in order to find their parents, who have mysteriously disappeared. They encounter talking birds and an evil Puppeteer queen, and go on separate paths in order to restore the true queen of the birds.
Summer And Bird provides examples of:
- Adults Are Useless: Although through no fault of their own, Summer and Bird's parents aren't able to do anything much for most of the book, leaving the girls to handle things, while the Puppeteer Queen is actively malicious. Averted at the end, when their mother officially retakes her position as Queen and helps sort everything out.
- The Baroness: The Puppeteer.
- Bittersweet Ending: Order and justice are restored in Down and the birds can once more enter the Green Home. But thousands of birds still died trying to get in without the queen's help, and Summer and Bird's parents must now live apart—they don't seem to actually be divorced as their cover story says, but they can't be together. And of course there's all the trauma the Puppeteer Queen caused everyone.
- Bond Creatures: Summer establishes a Psychic Link with a raven that allows them to share abilities.
- Central Theme: Everything (and everyone) important has more than one meaning or facet.
- The Chessmaster: The Puppeteer is an expert at manipulating people to ensure she can be the bird queen.
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander: The bird that explains Ben and the Bird Queen to Bird.
- Eaten Alive: Summer is eaten by a giant snake, and the Puppeteer Queen relies on birds being alive in her stomach in order to talk to them. However, in the case of the Queen, the birds don't stay alive, which is why she has to keep eating them.
- Eat Me: Summer feeds herself to a giant snake.
- Getting Eaten Is Harmless: Summer is no worse for wear despite being in the stomach of a giant snake for several days.
- Horror Hunger: The Puppeteer relies on eating birds alive in order to fuel her power.
- Karmic Death: The Puppeteer is killed by the army of birds she enslaved and abused, pushed out the window of the castle she usurped.
- Kill the Ones You Love: The Puppeteer attempts to get Bird to kill her mother.
- The Phoenix: Ben turns out to be one of these.
- Polly Wants a Microphone: The land of Down is inhabited by intelligent, talking birds.
- Metaphorically True: Everything the Puppeteer Queen says about how Summer and Bird's parents met is technically the truth, but she spins it in the most hurtful way possible to poison Bird's mind.
- Ominous Owl: The owl flips back and forth between being a villain and helping the protagonists, but is generally ominous and creepy.
- Rightful Queen Returns: The true Bird Queen returns to fix the land of Down and lead the birds to the Green Home.
- Shapeshifting Lover: Summer and Bird's father falls in love with the Bird Queen, who can shapeshift between a human and a swan.
- Sibling Yin-Yang: While Summer is very logical and relies on facts, Bird is emotionally vulnerable and prefers imagination and symbolism.
- Slowly Slipping Into Evil: Bird, in the hands of the Puppeteer Queen.
- Snakes Are Sinister: Zigzagged. The snake that eats Summer does appear to be sinister and is hostile toward Summer, although in the end it ends up helping her get to her destination.
- What You Are in the Dark: When Bird is trapped in the queen's castle after the Puppeteer's death causes the ground-floor door, which was not a real part of the castle, to vanish, her first thought is to free all the birds the Puppeteer imprisoned under the castle, and feed them until they're strong enough to fly away (even though she herself can't get out and has no way to get herself more food).
