When Matthew Bright asked if I’d contribute another of my queer re-tellings to another holiday anthology, I was stoked. When I saw the company I was keeping in A Few More Winter Tales: Twelve More Christmas Tales, I was truly chuffed.
Case in point? Sacchi Green’s “A Little Bird Tells All.”
The story has such a cute core to the narrative: a cuckoo clock long hidden in storage who observed all before it was tucked away, is brought back out and is struggling to comprehend things in the present day. It’s all well and good to break the world down into “naughty” or “nice” for Saint Nicholas, but the little cuckoo isn’t sure how to feel about the women living—and loving—in the home.
Especially when the clock is placed in their bedroom.
“A Little Bird Tells All” charms the reader on every level. The confusion of the cuckoo is nigh on adorable, and the conclusion—the bird trying ever-so-hard to do its duty and report to Saint Nicholas the goings on of the house—left a happy little smile on my face.
'Nathan Burgoine 