King Crow

by Jennifer Armstrong. (Crown, 1995. ISBN 0-517-59634-2). Picture Book. Grades 3+.
This review by Carol Otis Hurst first appeared in Teaching K-8 Magazine April 1995.

Review

A picture book for the third grade and up crowd is Jennifer Armstrong's King Crow. As in Way Home, the illustrations in King Crow are lush and dark, but this is a fairy tale. It's story of wise but vanquished King Cormac who has been blinded and placed in prison by his conqueror, King Bregant. Cormac is visited three times in prison by a crow who tells him just enough of what's going on outside to allow Cormac to seem to have magic knowledge. The language in this picture book is haunting and there's a moral here, but not too heavily handled.