Charles

PreS-Gr 2—A child finds a baby crow in the woods and cares for him until he's able to survive the wild. When the narrator of the story, a young girl, first finds Charles, he is nearly bald and looking out at the world with curious and clever blue eyes. She brings him home, feeds him, keeps him warm, and soon the two are traipsing through their home and the surrounding forest. As Charles grows he begins to fly further and further away, and the girl's parents remind her that he'll soon return to his home in the woods. The young girl is heartbroken when he finally does leave, but the gift that Charles brings her one moonlit night proves that even though he is at home in the woods he will never forget his young caretaker. The watercolor and gouache illustrations cover each forest spread with detailed, intricately patterned plant and animal life, and the forest is beautiful and inviting. Charles, when readers first meet him, is scrawny and more skin than feathers and the illustrator takes time to follow his transformation from an ungainly nestling to graceful adult crow. The prose is as pragmatic as the young narrator but still leaves room for the slightly magical conclusion.