'When lonely Hattie feels out of place at her new school, she creates a scarecrow - Crow. Hattie wants him to guard the den she finds in the playground, the only place she feels happy and comfortable. Poor Crow really just wants to have fun with the other children, but he takes his job for Hattie very seriously and is behaviour starts to get scarier and scarier. Will Hattie realise that Crow is ruining her chance to make new friends before it's too late?'
I remember when I moved school when I was eight, despite only having move from one side of my town to the other it changed my life completely. I had to move school to one closer so that my parents could easily walk me down the road for five minutes rather than drive across town, and it resulted in every single friends I'd made being gone. Coming to a new school midway through the year, with a class that had been together for years and had already made strong friendships was a daunting situation. It's something that I think parents who haven't gone through that can assume isn't going to be too big a deal, but to the children involved it's scary. This is the central theme of Crow, and Nicola Skinner does a wonderful job at bringing it to life with a magical twist.
Crow tells the story of Hattie Mole, a young girl who's moving to a the small village of Little Plug along with her dad and older brother Oliver. Hattie decides before they even get there that the move has ruined her life, as she's had to leave all of her old friends behind. Except for her pet rat, Sid; except that doesn't really count. After moving into their new home, a pink cottage, Hattie faces her first day of school. Despite some of the students trying to make friends with her she's very nervous, says odd things, and doesn't know how to act around the others.
During the lunchtime break Hattie is off playing on her own and finds a hollow tree. She decides that the tree is now her den, and sets about crafting decorations inside it, including hanging flower chains, and decorative hedgehogs made from mud and leaves. However, when a couple of the kids find it and accidentally break several of her creations Hattie decides that she needs something to protect her den and keep the other kids out. She builds a scarecrow out of some old clothes, a cushion, and some straw. But when a thunderstorm rolls into the village that same night it seems to bring the scarecrow named Crow, to life.
Crow is a wonderful story thanks to the very realistic and grounded start, and the sudden shift into the supernatural and the fun. If you go into the book without reading the back cover there's zero here to hint at what's the come, and the moment that Crow comes bouncing up to the cottage and knocks on the door with his wooden arms is a delightful surprise. And from this point on the book kind of becomes one with dual protagonists, as Crow gets as much of the spotlight that Hattie does.
Crow is almost the oppisite to Hattie, in that he's outgoing and fun loving, and is quick to try to make friends with the other children in Little Plug. However, Hattie doesn't want him to be friends with other people, as she made him to guard her den where she can be alone and do things by herself. As such, making Crow stick to that mission she sees how people go from liking Crow to kind of hating him, knowing that he's going to cause trouble and disruption wherever he goes. The slow transformation from happy scarecrow into a mean and sullen individual is almost like holding a mirror up to Hattie, and it seems like she realises that if she continues to isolate herself people will react to her the same way they do to Crow.
Eventually, Hattie not only realises that she needs to come out of her shell a little and try making friends with the other kids in the village, but realises that she needs to try to find a way to help Crow too, so that he doesn't become meaner and meaner.
The book has a number of really lovely illustrations throughout, provided by Rebecca Bagley, an example of which is on the front cover. The artwork is very nice, and has a wonderfully cartoonish and larger than life feel to it that absolutely suits where the story is going. The early illustrations are grounded enough that you don't expect a living scarecrow to pop up, but once he does he fits into the other characters perfectly. The moments of the book that are illustrated also help to convey the emotional moments and journey that Hattie goes on, with the artwork capturing the expressions in big bold way that young readers will enjoy.
Crow is a lot more fun than I was expecting. With Barrington Stoke producing books that are wildly fantastical, and very grounded, a book that sits nicely in the middle, and almost tricks you into thinking it's going to be one thing, and deals with a topic that some kids might feel they can't talk to their guardians about, makes this a wonderfully fun and potentially helpful read for younger kids. Definitely worth checking out.
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