Tico and the Golden Wings, (1964)
Leo Lionni
I learned about Tico and his golden feathers while reading Vivian Gussin Paley’s Girl with a Brown Crayon. This is a LIonni text I have overlooked until now, and Paley’s preoccupation with his loss of identity as Tico gives away his feathers to appease his friends made me curious to inspect the text further. Some view Tico as a representation of Paley, a teacher with many distinctions that set her apart from her peers.
Lionni uses a darker palette of greens and blues to create Tico and his bird friends, all of whom share the same soft black feathers. Tico, who is wingless, dreams of some day soaring with a set of golden wings until one day his wish is granted. His friends scorn him for wanting to be better than them, and Tico ends up gifting away his golden feathers one by one to people in need. For Tico the experience of giving brings him pleasure at the end, when he is again accepted as part of the flock.
The golden wings and feathers are illustrated beautifully with a golden tone that sparkles on the page even in less expensive versions of the text, symbolic of their value for Tico and those he helps. Though Tico gets his friends back by conforming, it seems that the experience of sharing that the feathers introduced the bird to was what ultimately brought him happiness.
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