Reeni is a young school student in an unnamed Indian city, and above all she's fascinated with birding. She learns that there's a pan-Indian or even a Global Bird Count upcoming but somehow the city authorities are attempting to discourage people from participating. Apparently, last year's numbers were lower than expected, which suggests the city's policies haven't been so environmentally friendly... what can be better than to shut the bird count at all, right? So Reeni uses an opportunity to reach out to fellow residents of her neighborhood prompted by a school assignment to conduct a survey on a topic of interest, so as to raise awareness of the upcoming bird count and generally of the importance of birds in urban environment.

This book can be a great primer for middle-grade reader to the topics of environmental activism and civic engagement. What I really liked about it is that it avoided the pitfalls of some books with similar themes in which the cause is "for all good and against all bad," so the baddies are just pure evil. Instead, here the reader can encounter together with Reeni and her friends that sometimes you need to balance between equally benign goals, and if someone doesn't care enough that's because they don't know about the need to care yet or are occupied with caring about other very important things.

"Reeni, it's one bird's nest against sustainable power for a whole building full of people." [...] "Can't you just - I don't know - shoo it away or something?"

And as a birder myself, I can attest that the book really reads informed by the birding subculture (though without excessively complicated details); it's not just "well, that would be a good thing to right about."

The book is a second in the series but if you haven't happened to read the first one (just like me), it doesn't require familiarity with the first installment at all in order to enjoy the story.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an eARC; the review above is my honest independent opinion.