The Ministry of the Nest

When I was a little girl, Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman was one of my favorite books. It was a before-bed favorite from a time when I was too young to read myself. My mother loves to tell a story of how my uncle was reading it to me during a visit and I quoted the book completely from memory to the point where my uncle thought I was actually reading it.

The story goes that a baby bird hatches while his mother is away from the nest. In looking for his mother, he falls from the tree and begins to walk around asking various characters if they are his mother: a chicken, a dog, a kitten, a cow, a truck, and so on. Eventually, the baby bird makes it back to his nest just a moment before the mother returns and upon seeing her, the baby bird knows the mother bird at first sight.