Cute story with beautiful illustrations, I think it just lacked something for me...some characters fell kind of flat.

"And we thought the movements together, and we expressed with our bodies that same thought. We were not ourselves anymore but each other, speaking through our bodies to a wounded and grieving land. And what we said was this:
     The body holds the body.
     The arms hold the spear.
          And the spear cuts through water."

There is quite a complex, deeply-felt, painstaking dance woven into this folkloric tale. It may have been my slow digestion of this book, but I'm not sure I've ever read such an exquisite example of multiple perspectives being voiced together. I felt Vanished Birds had a musical quality to it, and I've experienced the same with The Spear Cuts Through Water, just so many emotions.