A Crow of His Own

Cute story about finding your own voice and always "doing you" rather than trying to be someone else.

Clyde is the new rooster on the farm, trying to endear himself to the various animals that adored their previous rooster.

There are several vocabulary words that you may have to stop and explain (to expand your child's repertoire), OR paraphrase for the younger ones. This may be off-putting for some families and very young children, and a great opportunity for others.

Examples of advanced vocabulary and phrases: [opportunities, taking a gander, assured, inquired, speechless distress, mused, props, choreographing, sublime, legacy, initial, rededicated, disapproving, promptly, undignified, humiliated, wattle, determined, back in the saddle, curdled, dramatic, aerial, disgruntled, pity, crooning, crescendo, raspy, and illustrious. (hide spoiler)]

There was some fun word play with the animals commentary that adults and older children will find amusing.

The illustrations were fantastic. It's one of those books with a lot of details in the images that you can keep combing the picture looking for hidden gems.

I think this is not great for the youngest of children, but if you have an advanced reader for their age, they may appreciate it. This is probably good for kids on the cusp of leaving picture books behind for their first chapter books.

Thank you Netgalley and Charlesbridge for a free digital copy in exchange for an honest review.

This book is so fun! Loved it. The different voices make it even more interesting for little ones to hear. Our library will definitely be buying this one!

Sunrise Farm needs a new rooster for the daily wake-up call, as their old one, larger-than-life Larry, has moved on to bigger things. Larry made quite a spectacular show of his early morning duty and is now a star, traveling the country and visiting talk shows.
The farmers Jay and Kevin have bought a new cockerel, Clyde. Sadly, he fails to impress from the start, as he's small in size and rather shy. The farm animals are very disappointed and wish Larry was back. Just Roberta the goose is friendly and helpful.
Clyde decides, his best option is to copy Larry, but that doesn't work out particularly well, as he studies all night how to crow like Larry and in the morning he is so tired, he oversleeps.
The animals are upset and angry. Who has ever heard of a rooster sleeping in?
But Clyde is not prepared to give up that easily and tries his best to be exactly like Larry. It never works, things keep going wrong all the time and eventually he's close to giving up, but kind Roberta has a good advice. He should simply crow his own crow. Will it work? Will the other animals accept him, if he's just himself?

A Crow of His Own is a very funny and warm hearted story of being yourself, as we are all special, just the way we are and that it's important, to find your own voice.
I read the book with my preschoolers and they rooted for the cute rooster right from the word go. You can't help, but feel for Clyde.

The farm animals talk to each other in comic style speech bubbles and the younger children found the smaller print in the bubbles a bit more challenging to read, as are some of the words in the book, as very few young readers will know expressions like: distress, crescendo, choreographing, But the author has made quite an effort to find a wide variety of verbs, instead of the normally constant "said" and "asked" and it works rather well. Also the vivid illustrations are completely splendid, with lots of small details (like little mice to look out for, etc.), and they created with my group a lot of fun and kept them engaged with the story throughout.

A story of acceptance and fitting in. Great message, cute story.

Clyde is the new rooster on the farm, after the beloved Larry left. He tries so hard to fill Larry's shoes, but the animals are not accepting. Clyde perseveres and eventually wins them over by just being himself.

A very cute book about how being true to yourself is best - complete with your own style!