Crows maintain a particular place in my coronary heart. I used to be first-on and last-off my faculty bus as a child, residing on a wooded highway in what was then rural Virginia. These waits for the bus had been lonely, and the corporate I stored on these chilly, darkish mornings was crows. One would caw from the creekline, and I’d caw again, and others would be a part of, and we’d all have correctly greeted the morning and one another. With that love as background, I used to be delighted to find the brand new image guide I AM WE: HOW CROWS COME TOGETHER TO SURVIVE, written by Leslie Barnard Sales space and illustrated by Alexandra Finkeldey. The guide explores roosting conduct, explaining why crows be a part of forces to create teams that may quantity within the hundreds to outlive the winter.
I Am We has been out barely a month, however is positioned to be an award-winner. It has already garnered starred critiques from three of the foremost skilled guide overview organizations: Kirkus, Writer’s Weekly, and Booklist.
Cowl of the image guide I Am We: How Crows Come Collectively to Survive, written by Leslie Barnard Sales space and illustrated by Alexandra Finkeldey
Not solely does this guide characteristic one in all my favourite birds, the American Crow (you may learn one other KidLit Chook E book about crows right here) however it’s a good match for October. Illustrator Alexandra’s crows—with their pink glowing eyes—mix with Leslie’s tight, lyrical spell-binding textual content to create a narrative that academics and oldsters will likely be pleased to learn and reread. This can be a “Spooky Season” story that has nothing to do with costumes or sweet, skulls or skeletons. As a substitute, it’s a STEM guide (Science, Know-how, Engineering and Math) that may be simply woven into lesson in areas similar to animal diversifications and poetic gadgets.
Nightfall, and crows coming collectively… “So we blanket each floor. We cling to each edge. We bloom from each department, each limb, each ledge.”
Technically, this guide is assessed as “Informational Fiction.” It isn’t thought of nonfiction solely as a result of it’s instructed from the voice and perspective of the crow: “Our spell is just this: I observe him, and he follows she, and so they observe me, and me turns into we—”
Creator Leslie Barnard Sales space has taught from the preschool to the school degree, and her understanding of youngsters’s marvel and awe shines by in her lyrical books about science and nature. She says that she writes for “the kids who’re noticing these little issues that adults stroll proper previous.” Sources on her web site for I Am We embody a video with the sights and sounds of hundreds of crows gathering to sleep, a storytime information, crow identification, a crow’s nest design problem and extra.
Illustrator Alexandra Finkeldey is famous for her drawings of birds, and is sought out by artwork administrators and publishers for his or her chook books for youngsters, as seen in Saving the Noticed Owl and When the Storks Got here Dwelling. In I Am We, her artwork take the crows from sundown to the hazards of the night time to the glories of daybreak.
The primary blush of daybreak: “Now we raise off. Now we disperse. The weave is unwoven. The magic reversed.”
In any science-related image guide, I all the time suggest turning first to the top, to learn the backmatter. These pages of data assist put the story right into a broader context, and assist present solutions to most of the questions youngsters may ask. Backmatter in I Am We not solely consists of sections on roosting, but additionally on the crow’s brains and communication and foraging methods.
Backmatter in I AM WE offers extra data on these extraordinary birds.
In my hometown of Denver, there’s a big roost in downtown. I used to be fascinated to be taught in I Am We that one cause for the growing numbers of city roosts is that looking is prohibited in cities. Plus, in fact, cities are hotter!
This guide belongs in libraries or colleges, and its spooky, scary really feel makes it a pure for Halloween collections. It’s a true delight to learn aloud.
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I Am We: How Crows Come Collectively to Survive, written by Leslie Barnard Sales space and illustrated by Alexandra Finkeldey
Chronical Books, 2025
ISBN: 978-1797226156
44 pages, ages 5-8
US $18.99; £13.99 UK
