This theme is inflected with sometimes subtle, sometimes explicit Hindu and Buddhist overtones. Though these episodes come late in the book, they form a theme throughout Mukerji's novel/memoir/fantasy. The conflict and his role in it are too much for the bird's tender heart, and he becomes infected with negative emotions and feelings that he must strive to overcome. Over the no-man's-land of the front lines, Gay-Neck contracts an illness: fear and hatred. Gay-Neck is sent to the European front as a carrier pigeon, and though his early adventures with Mukerji prepared him for the long flights, nothing could have prepared the noble pigeon for the horrors of war. Throughout the book, Mukerji and Gay-Neck play in their home city of Dentam, explore the Himalayas, and become involved in the British war effort during World War I. His favored pigeon, a beautiful male flyer called Gay-Neck due to his throat coloring, takes Mukerji on many adventures and flies away on a few of his own. It describes Mukerji's own adventures growing up in India, particularly his joys and trials raising pigeons. India in the early 20th century was very different from 21st-century America, and this novel shows us just how different.Ĭalling Gay-Neck a novel is a little misleading. Gay-Neck: The Story of a Pigeon is unique among Newbery Medalists in that it tells the story of a pigeon both from the bird's point of view, and from the perspective of the young Indian boy who keeps and trains him.

White's Wilbur, or Dhan Gopal Mukerji's Gay-Neck. There's something universally appealing for younger readers in seeing the world from wholly different eyes, whether they be the eyes of Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit, E. Without animal stories, children's literature as a genre may never have existed.

Gay-Neck by Dhan Gopal Mukerji