11 Mar Board Game and Book Pairings: Fine-feathered Friends and Fiends!
Spring officially starts with the vernal equinox in late March, but it unofficially begins when you start seeing birds looking for food and building nests. From veteran birdwatchers to backyard dabblers to drivers waiting for geese to cross the road, we see the return of our winged friends as a sign that winter has ended. Grab your binoculars and field guide because we have a habitat-forming game and a cozy mystery about the bird-en of proof!
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Board Game: Wingspan
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– Design the best bird sanctuaries by placing species in the various habitats you manage in the beautifully illustrated & award-winning Wingspan. Compete with friends or use Automa Cards to play against the game itself as you strategically place birds to work with their environment and each other to win!
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- Players: 1-5
- Playing time: 40-70 minutes
- Age: 10+
- From Boardgamegeek: “Wingspan is a competitive, medium-weight, card-driven, engine-building board game designed by Elizabeth Hargrave and published by Stonemaier Games, which features over 170 birds illustrated by Beth Sobel, Natalia Rojas, and Ana Maria Martinez.
“You are bird enthusiasts—researchers, bird watchers, ornithologists, and collectors—seeking to discover and attract the best birds to your network of wildlife preserves. Each bird extends a chain of actions in one of your habitats. These habitats focus on gaining food tokens via custom dice in a birdfeeder dice tower, laying eggs using egg miniatures, and drawing from hundreds of unique bird cards and playing them. The winner is the player with the most points after four rounds.” (description via https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/266192/wingspan)
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Book: Die, Die Birdie by J. R. Ripley
– Launching a small business is never easy, but most of the time the inventory doesn’t include a dead body in the storeroom. Kicking off the Bird Lover’s cozy mystery series, Die, Die Birdie follows Amy’s attempts to clear her name and get her niche shop for birdwatchers off the ground.
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- From the publisher: “For Amy Simms, hatching a birding shop in her hometown of Ruby Lake, North Carolina, hasn’t exactly been a breeze. But could a deadly discovery clip her wings for good? It’s just days before Amy plans to open Birds & Bees on the first floor of her creaky Victorian house, but delayed seed shipments have prevented the fledgling owner from stocking her shelves. And it doesn’t help that Amy’s best friend and business partner is out of town indefinitely. With locals skeptical about the shop taking flight, the last thing Amy needs now is a dead man in her storeroom or for a crotchety tenant to catch her holding a bloody bird feeder hook over his body.
“Pigeonholed as a leading murder suspect by police and lacking a solid alibi, Amy delves into the victim’s ugly past and searches for clues on his killer with only a short time before she ends up like so many of her beloved feathery friends – trapped behind bars!” (description via https://www.amazon.com/Die-Birdie-J-R-Ripley/dp/160183831X/)
- From the publisher: “For Amy Simms, hatching a birding shop in her hometown of Ruby Lake, North Carolina, hasn’t exactly been a breeze. But could a deadly discovery clip her wings for good? It’s just days before Amy plans to open Birds & Bees on the first floor of her creaky Victorian house, but delayed seed shipments have prevented the fledgling owner from stocking her shelves. And it doesn’t help that Amy’s best friend and business partner is out of town indefinitely. With locals skeptical about the shop taking flight, the last thing Amy needs now is a dead man in her storeroom or for a crotchety tenant to catch her holding a bloody bird feeder hook over his body.
- Bonus: Grab your binoculars and see if you can spot Steve Martin, Jack Black, and Owen Wilson’s bird-watching adventures in the 2011 film The Big Year!
