Love brainy birds? You will love this book. Candace Savage, author of the acclaimed adult books Bird Brains: The Intelligences of Crows, Ravens, Magpies as well as Crows: Encounters with the Wise Guys has returned to one of her favorite subjects. How to Know a Crow: The Biography of a Brainy Bird was written for children roughly ages 9-12, but will be enjoyed by older kids and adults as well.
Savage’s writing style is friendly, conversational, and extremely accessible. In How to Know a Crow, Savage has written the biography of a truly engaging character. You’ll be swept up in the life of a female American Crow named Oki, from her hatching, to games with siblings to the drama of her adopted family.
An illustration of the crow Oki hatching in HOW TO KNOW A CROW by Candace Savage, illustrated by Rachel Hudson
While Oki is fictional, all of the incidents that Savage has woven into Oki’s life are real. Savage worked closely with three scientists in developing this book, and had access to the complex life stories of eight generations of banded and tagged crows. A spread of “Extraordinary Lives” of a crow family felt as if it had the complexity of a Shakespearean play.
A spread exploring the extraordinary lives of a family of tagged crows in HOW TO KNOW A CROW
The main text in How to Know a Crow is interspersed with “Crow Lab” sidebars that offer readers a variety of activities, from visiting a winter crow roost to writing crow-themed limericks to knowing what to do if you find a young crow on the ground. “Pro Tips” offer an additional layer of insights, with tips like “If you want to figure out where a nesting crow is going, look at it out of the corner of your eye or pretend to be looking at something else. If you look at a crow directly, it will become even more wary than usual and will not go back to its nest.”
“Crow Lab” in the book HOW TO KNOW A CROW by Candace Savage, illustrated by Rachel Hudson
In researching for the illustrations in this book, artist Rachel Hudson ascended in a spider lift to an abandoned crow’s nest in the top of a tree. Her goal with this book was to bring the intelligence and personality of the crows to life. Her use of diagrams and double spreads brings a sense of movement to the book as a whole. Hudson’s life cycle diagram of the West Nile virus, including the amplification of the virus that occurs in crows, doesn’t make the horrific die-offs of corvids less horrific, but it does make it understandable.
If you’ve got kids around the house this summer, get a copy of the book and just set it out. It is so inviting and appealing—and so hard to put down—that you’ll soon have brainy kids who know a whole lot about these brainy birds.
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How to Know a Crow: The Biography of a Brainy Bird, written by Candace Savage, illustrated by Rachel Hudson
Greystone Kids and David Suzuki Institute, 2024
ISBN: 978-1-77164-916-2
$26.95 CAN; $21.95 US; £12.99 UK
120 pages, ages 9-12, grade level 4-6
What a fascinating topic! I love crows, and now want to read this book to learn more about their lifestyle and habits. Thanks for sharing this with us, Susan!