Little Crow to the Rescue / El Cuervito al rescate

by Victor Villaseñor, Felipe Ugalde Alcantara (Illustrator)

Little Crow to the Rescue / El Cuervito Al Rescate is a colorful folktale about the natural world by renowned Chicano writer Victor Villasenor. Father Crow teaches Little Crow about the long, interrelated relationship between crows and humans. But in spite of all that each does for the other & the humans plant the corn that feeds the crows, and they in turn sing beautiful songs of thanks & humans try to kill crows. Little Crow is troubled, but soon he comes up with an idea that just might save all the crows.

32 pages, Hardcover

First published November 30, 2005

About the author

Victor Villaseñor is an acclaimed Mexican-American writer, best known for the New York Times bestseller novel Rain of Gold. Villaseñor's works are often taught in American schools. He went on to write Thirteen Senses: A Memoir (2001), a continuation of Rain of Gold. His book Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004) describes his life. The author has received awards and endorsements, including an appointment to serve as the founding Steinbeck Chair at Hartnell College and the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, from February 2003 to March 2004.

Reviews

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This bilingual book is well written and explains a feature of the world that young students may not understand. In the book, a father tells his son a story about crows and why they fly away before humans can reach and catch them. Crows, as told by the father, are intelligent creatures and fly away as soon as they see a farmer bend down to pick up rocks; crows, according to the farmer know when farmers are about to throw rocks at them and therefore, they fly away before the humans have a chance to do this. Then, the father tells his son about the crow’s son that advises his father that they should not wait until the humans bend down to pick up rocks to leave. He tells his father that as soon as humans approach, they should start flying away as fast as they possibly can. In the end, the father crow thinks this is a great idea and realizes that even a father can learn from their young son. The written text in this book is well done and well written both in English and in Spanish. Children that only speak Spanish could benefit from reading this book because they can read the text in Spanish to understand the plot, but then they can look at the text in English in order to learn how to say certain words and phrases. Also, it would be fun for a teacher to read the text in Spanish and to have the students guess what the teacher is reading by looking at the illustrations; making predictions is a great skill that students should learn early on. Overall, the bilingual text and the illustrations are well done and make this book a wonderful addition to any classroom.

[Kelly]

Illustrations are interesting because they have an outline so they seem detached from the overall picture, but the colors are nice and bold. Good story - is a fable but kind of strange/dumb.