Words Are for the Birds: The Transformative Role of Word Study in Eudora Welty's The Shoe Bird

Abstract

In the early 1960s, as she was attempting to complete Losing Battles, Eudora Welty began work on her only children's book, The Shoe Bird. Familial and financial difficulties, including her mother's failing health and the need for a new roof for the Welty house, prompted her to write the book for the promise of a $5000 advance from Harcourt, Brace and World. Due to the poor reception it received from some reviewers and the doubts Welty herself expressed about its quality, The Shoe Bird often remains overlooked and undervalued as a part of Welty's collected works. This essay is to reassess the significance of The Shoe Bird in relation to Welty's personal life and literary career by examining her correspondence related to The Shoe Bird alongside the first and second typescript drafts of the text. This study reveals a more complete and complex narrative of the crafting of the book, a journey that complements the children's story itself as they both reflect a struggle for freedom found through the power of language to prompt curiosity, courage, understanding, and love.