by Catherine Feher Elston
The cleverness and pervasive success of ravens and crows has been recognized by humans in many cultures, for ages. In native american tribes the raven is often seen as a creator or a spirit guide, although in other minds ravens are associated with death (because they feed on carrion). This book is a kind of celebration of ravens- the first part has legends and creation stories featuring Raven from various Pacific Northwest tribes, the middle part is some native american history (with the raven connection a thin tangent that is barely mentioned) and the final section is more factual about raven behavior with quotations from some scientific studies including several from Bernd Henrich and Konrad Lorenz (which in my opinion are better read in their original context). The first part was good, I had mixed feelings about the middle, and the last section wasn't anything new to me. Actually one of the better parts is the afterward, where the author describes some of her own work rehabilitating and caring for injured ravens. So the book feels rather uneven and sometimes the wording was odd or I felt dubious about the content. It would have been nice to have more of the legends, or more detail about the personal experiences. I could have really done without the history section, which had a different tone entirely and felt out of place to me. I did really like the inked illustrations by Lawrence Ormsby, very nice.
Rating: 2/5 208 pages, 1991
Too bad this one wasn't better. I do love ravens. :)
ReplyDeleteYes. I think the best raven books I have on my shelf are Charlie's Raven and The Mind of the Raven. After finishing this I promptly looked through two large non-fiction books I have about birds, to see how ravens are featured there- no specific chapters, but lots of detailed pages!
DeleteThis reminds me why my historical hero, Sam Houston, was named The Raven by the Cherokee chief who adopted him as a son when Houston was a teen and living with them by choice.
ReplyDeleteSorry the book wasn't better, but ravens are definitely fascinating to anyone who pays attention to birds at all.
Agree. I think the history part of this book was attempting to show how important ravens were to the native peoples- but I just didn't get a good sense of it.
ReplyDeleteMy dad got my mum that book about the person who's in charge of the Tower of London ravens, for Christmas! I am excited to borrow it -- corvids are such absolutely weird and fascinating birds. It sounds like this wasn't the very best book about them though.
ReplyDeleteNow that sounds like a book I might enjoy! I saw them- or at least one- raven at the Tower on a very brief trip there years ago.
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