Because of That Crow

Just as 10-year-old Harris Albert Olson is trying to sleep, a crow flies into his bedroom. He soon realizes that “Everything was different because of that crow.” (p. 5) Harris is still struggling with the death of his parents in an automobile accident three years ago. He feels responsible for their deaths. He now lives with his widowed grandfather and his two sisters, 13-year-old Tessa and three-year-old Pinky. Harris misses both his parents and his grandmother. Even though their grandmother died in a fire over four years ago, his grampa never talks about her. Harris struggles with her loss as well as Grampa’s silence.

Soon the crow becomes a fixture in Harris’s life. It follows him to school. It frequently appears when he least expects it. Why is the crow in his life now? As Harris continues to struggle with his grief and guilt, the crow provides a welcome distraction. Harris is also ignoring his schoolwork. In fact, he has not even started his Science Fair project. He is the only one in his class who hasn’t submitted a project topic. His teacher, Mrs. Featherbuster, urges him to complete his work – and Harris decides to do his project on crows. As Harris works on his project, he discovers new ways to deal with his painful memories.

Harris Albert Olson is a wonderfully complex character. He struggles with guilt about the accident which killed his parents. He wonders how his parents are doing in heaven. Are they angels now? He is full of empathy for others such as Xavier, his fellow student who “had something different about his brain.” Harris loves the fact that Xavier sings “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” as he collects the class registers every day. He thinks deeply about the issues confronting him. Some of his thoughts are very memorable: “Memory is an important thing,” “When you lose someone, they’re not completely gone,” (p. 109) and “The idea of dying didn’t bother him. It was living that was hard.” (p. 44)

There are lots of thought-provoking issues addressed in Because of That Crow: grief, bird biology, family relationships, guilt, death, science projects, research, dementia, animal care, responsibility, memory, empathy, and the afterlife. At the end of the book in the “Interview with Bev Brenna”, the writer addresses the fundamental message of this novel, “I think kids need to know that sadness is part of the human experience. Through the complicated lives of characters we read about, we can all learn vicariously about resilience and hope.”