Birds in my Closet was inspired by an experience that the author's husband had with their adopted son of Black Vietnamese heritage. Hoang, age five, has squirreled himself away in his closet, feeling less vulnerable having slept on a mat in Vietnam. His mom and dad supply him with a sleeping bag in hopes that he will have fewer nightmares. He talks to his dad and expresses his struggle with being different from the other kids at school, where he is called Blackie and Cotton Picker. He has taped pictures of birds all over his walls from his Ranger Rick magazines. His dad crawls in beside him and asks, "What if all these birds looked alike?" Hoang recognizes that it would be a pretty dull world. The boy falls asleep and dreams that he wakes up in a nest as a "blooming full-feathered bird." He soon discovers that every bird in Birdship County looks just like him! And so the adventure of finally discovering the value of his uniqueness begins.