CLEVER CROW

An admiring tribute to the habits and smarts of the corvid clan.

Gill’s standout mixed-media illustrations feature individual and group portraits of numerous crows and crow cousins, stylishly rendered in fine, exact detail. These visuals, along with a gallery of eggs, will draw the eye first, but young audiences will find Butterworth’s rapturous observations, delivered in multiple sizes of type, likewise worth lingering over. “If a crow looks at you with its small, round eye, you can be sure it’s thinking,” she writes. “Crows are clever birds. Very clever birds.” If she sells them rather short by characterizing them as “not…graceful to look at or lovely to listen to,” she does suggest that, considering their canny problem-solving and tool-using skills, they’re as intelligent as monkeys and apes. She urges readers to find out for themselves just how bright they are; given that they live all around the world in many habitats, they’re particularly easy to find and study. (And, she notes, the crow family contains more than 100 different kinds of birds.) “Crows are smart, clever, crafty, and playful,” she closes, “just like you!”

Brief but as lively and appealing as its subject.