Rudi's Pond

In this book, Bunting takes on the difficult topic of sickness and eventual loss of a loved one.  Like many of her books, this tale is based on a true story.  In it, the young narrator's best friend, Rudi, is very ill.  He loves to paint and draw and, though sick, he summons the strength to help the narrator paint her garden gate green with yellow tulips on it.  Most of the time, though, Rudi and is confined to his bed; he can't go on nature walk with his friend and spends a lot of time in the hospital.  Very understandably the narrator struggles with this.  Eventually, Rudi dies and the narrator and her classmates respond by creating a pond on the school grounds under a big knobby oak tree to remember him by.  Rudi loved hummingbirds and left behind a feeder he made.  His friends hang this by the pond in memory of him.  One day, a hummingbird comes to visit.  The bird returns over and over.  Then summer vacation comes.  The little girl takes the hummingbird feeder home with her.  She wonders if the hummingbird will be able to find her house.  (It's never seen it before.)  But as she places the feeder by her green gate - the one Rudi adorned with yellow tulips - gate, the story closes with the line "I think the hummingbird will remember."  The implication is that Rudi's spirit and memory lives on in the hummingbird.


Theme: Death and loss; death is not the end.
Symbolism: Rudi's memory lives on in the happiness and color of the tiny hummingbird.