• Age: 4 to 8
• Grade: p to 3

Winner at the 2018 Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards. When home doesn’t shelter Kalak’s family, they decide to set off and find a new life elsewhere. Together, they will fight the odds to find the longed-for happiness.

Kalak is a stork who lives with his family somewhere where the nests are old, the roofs are all damaged, the earth is dry, and there is never enough food for everyone. One day, with a nostalgic longing in their hearts but also hope for the future, they decide to leave everything behind, and fly off to a new part of the world… The journey is long and tenuous and it lasts for weeks. Little Kalak starts to lose hope and strength after days of flying above the ocean. He lags behind the flock, almost catching up only to be separated from them again by a storm.

When he finally arrives to a new land, injured and exhausted, he finds himself rejected by a group of local storks, but hopefully Kalak finds his family and reunites with them in joy. Finally, Kalak’s flock finds a new home where there is food for everybody and help from others.

Maria Quintana Silva's profile page

MARIE-NOËLLE HÉBERT lives in Montreal. Largely self-taught, she studied advertising illustration at Collège Salette. She did a series of illustrations for the documentary Carricks, dans le sillage des Irlan­dais by Viveka Melki (Tortuga Films, 2017) and illustrated the children’s book Le voyage de Kalak (Cuento de luz, 2018). The French edition of My Body in Pieces, her first graphic novel, was awarded the Prix des libraires du Québec in 2020.

Marie-Noelle Hebert's profile page

• Winner, Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards

"Kalak is a stork of the world, free to fly high and discover new horizons. An evocative read-aloud that is appropriate for early elementary students in a setting that invites discussion.” —School Library Journal

"A story about migration and survival with a universal theme." —Kirkus Reviews