4 star review

There once lived the queerest family of crows deep in a forest as everyone knows.
There was a crow father and a crow mother, and four crow sisters and a crow brother.

Now you’ve met the family, let me tell you a little about them. The four crow sisters are quite well behaved, but the brother crow is always in trouble.When the farmer catches him trying to steal his cherries, he sets brother crow to work on his farm. But after chopping up the farmer’s flagpole for firewood, pumping out the water from the well onto the unsuspecting cat, and generally creating havoc everywhere he goes, the farmer decides to sell him at the markets. But who wants a cantankerous crow?

This book was created in Sweden over 60 years ago by Lennart Hellsing, who passed away last year aged 96. He was a finalist in the 2010 Hans Christian Andersen Award, the world’s most prestigious prize for children’s authors. The publisher discovered The Cantankerous Crow in a secondhand bookshop in Gothenburg some years ago. In the publisher’s note he tells us:‘I realised immediately that here was something special that cried out to be enjoyed by a whole new generation of readers.’

So now our lucky Aussie kids can be charmed by this cantankerous crow.

Reviewed by Merle Morcom