Of Nightingales That Weep Award from the Children's Literature Association as the best English-language children's book that did not win a major award when it was originally published twenty years earlier. The award is named after the mythical bird phoenix, which is reborn from its ashes, to suggest the book's rise from obscurity. Set during the Genpei War, the two rival Japanese clans, the Genji and Heike, are constantly battling for the support of the Senior Cloistered Emperor and the power to rule Japan. Takiko is a beautiful girl who can talentedly play the koto, a thirteen-stringed instrument. She is only eleven years old
Strix (mythology) Strix (mythology) The strix (plural striges or strixes), in the mythology of classical antiquity, was a bird of ill omen, the product of metamorphosis, that fed on human flesh and blood. It also referred to witches and related malevolent folkloric beings. The "strix" is described as a large-headed bird with transfixed eyes, rapacious beak, greyish white wings, and hooked claws in Ovid's "Fasti". This is the only thorough description of the strix in Classical literature. Elsewhere, it is described as being dark-colored. The "strīx" () was a nocturnally crying creature which positioned its feet upwards and head below, according to