Barbara Gregorich

Cookie the Cockatoo: Everything Changes Barbara Gregorich

Back in 1934 nobody knew that Cookie, a young Major Mitchell's cockatoo from Australia, would live into the next century. Nobody knew that Cookie would become a celebrity bird. Nobody knew what profound and rapid changes the world would experience. Sitting in his cage, and sometimes flying around a locked room, Cookie lived through changes of all kinds -Superman, TV, Adidas, kidney machines, space travel, mass prisons, iPhones, climate change, heroic deeds, and more.




Serious, yet also humorous, these free-verse poems examine the outside world through the eyes of a preening, self-centered caged bird who questions captivity, war, and natural catastrophe while marveling at events such as Sputnik, figure skating, and Sully's landing of a damaged airplane in the Hudson River.




Cookie the Cockatoo: Everything Changes focuses on change. Changes in the world, changes in Cookie. Change as something whose direction must be examined.