Review of "The Remarkable Story of Willie the Crow" by Linda Harkey, Narrated by Heidi Immler, Illustrated by Mike Minick

Paperback Score: 90+/100 (9.0+ out of 10)
Audiobook Score: 93+/100 (9.3+ out of 10)
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The Remarkable Story of Willie the Crow is a cute, warm, and quirky children's book by Linda Harkey! It is adorably illustrated by Mike Minick. The audiobook is exceptionally narrated by Heidi Immler, a young and rising star who really elevates this story with a stellar, dynamic, and deliberate performance.

While maintaining a positive and friendly tone, this book still manages to explore a lot of deeper and more complex themes like prejudice, disabilities, peer pressure, overcoming fear, teamwork, and the importance of empathy—even among the most unlikely of friends.

This is a book about setting aside differences and realizing that we all have so much in common and so much to learn from one another!

The book chooses to take the perspective of a wise old hunting dog named Doc as he narrates the unexpected friendship between his daughter Patch and a young crow named Willie, exploring their adventures, challenges, and the lessons they all learn along the way.

We find that a lot of the other hunting dogs like Zeke ("Windwalker Storm Shadow") look down on (and distrust) birds like Willie, disapproving of the relationship/friendship between Patch and Willie. One could interpret the friendship between Patch and Willie as a subtle metaphor for interracial or intercultural relationships, highlighting how bonds can form across perceived boundaries despite societal pressures, prejudice, and norms.

Zeke comes across as the old-fashioned bigot who can't accept that people who are different might not be so bad after all. However, it can be inferred that Zeke has his reasons. Birds are, after all, their targets—sorta like their "enemies" in a sense. Zeke comes across as a person of experience (despite being younger than Doc, his older brother) and may have had negative experiences with birds and crows. Still, a bad experience or two with one group of people doesn't make that entire group of people bad. It also doesn't make one group of people the same. Individuals are still individuals. Some may choose to do bad deeds like crimes while others in the same group might choose to help the needy, invent a cure to a disease, or contribute to society in some other positive way. This might give parents and teachers a lot to talk to their children about.

This book is very ambitious and attempts a lot of big, huge things.

However, we have to admit that there are aspects of this book that frustrated us and stood out like a sore thumb.

The umbrella reason for our frustration is that this book is needlessly complicated and wordy despite its relatively straight-forward story and character arcs. Let's start with the names, nicknames, and designations of different characters and places in this book.

We're told that most of these characters are "German Shorthaired Pointers." This is something that means nothing to most kids (and even adults) and really exemplifies how needlessly wordy and complicated parts of this book are. How often do you have a conversation with someone about their German Shorthaired Pointer? To most kids (and adults) a dog is a dog—a big dog, a medium dog, a small dog, a white dog, a brown dog, etc.

We're told that this book takes place at somewhere called the "Lazy Dog Hacienda." Ok... Most American kids know what "Lazy" is. Most American kids know what a "Dog" is. However, most American kids don't know what a "Hacienda" is. Is it a hotel? A house? A farm? A spa? It could honestly be either of these (or none of these). It could literally translate to "The Lazy Dog Place." We're also told about "Shorthair Boulevard" and "Catoosa, Oklahoma" as if these details mean anything to most people. This on its own isn't such a big deal, but it becomes a big deal when it's compounded by other mouthfuls of information that's dumped on us.

For example, why do the following character names have to be so complicated, wordy, and difficult to remember/keep track of?

Chicoree’s Hickory Doc
Windwalker Storm Shadow
Newt Splashing Star Cocoa
Jayhawk Crow Patch

Those long names just seem really unnecessary and tedious. Yes, their names are shortened later on, but that creates another problem: it can seem to readers like these characters either have two names or are different characters altogether. Why would you want to create that kind of confusion just to have a name like Newt Splashing Star Cocoa and get one joke out of it?

On that note, let's talk about the narrator of the story (the character, not the audiobook narrator).
Who is talking? And why do we need a narrator who is also a character in the story? Couldn't we have just had a normal semi-omniscient narrator to communicate in third-person and not complicate things?

Seriously, it's a big question because the narrator keeps referring to himself as "I" and talking about personal things (like his connection to Patch, his daughter). Ok, fair enough. But that gets needlessly complicated when he starts referring to his "Ma." Wait a minute... Ma? Who's Ma? His mom or Patch's mom? By the way, who is Patch's Mom? Where is Patch's Mom? Why is Patch's Mom not there and why doesn't she show concern when Patch is in danger? Kids might start to wonder. Kids wonder about that sort of thing and might start to worry about her.

We also briefly hear about "our Pa."

We thought Doc was an elderly dog (seemingly the oldest), so hearing him talk about his Ma and Pa is both confusing and strange. Then we learn that Zeke is his younger brother, and somehow, someway he has a completely different opinion on birds and society despite presumably having the same upbringing as Doc.

The focus of this whole story is presumably supposed to be on Patch and Willie, the titular character of the book. However, things get muddled when another character named Newt gets introduced seemingly out of left field without any prior build, lead up, or even a passing mention until page 23—2/3rds of the way through the book! Yes, he kind of appears in the crowd of dogs on page 17, but he isn't named or talked about, and no attention at all is drawn to him. In fact, his back is turned to the reader. He is literally just a dog in a crowd of dogs on the page. Then, he abruptly and out of nowhere becomes the hero of the entire book all of sudden. That's a bit of a problem.

You could argue that this is indicative of how anyone can be a hero and anyone can make a difference no matter their status in life. However, we're not quite sure if that was the point of sidelining Newt in the beginning or if it might have just been an oversight.

Imagine if, in Romeo & Juliet, the narrator cut away from Romeo & Juliet only to have Friar John become the main hero of the story as he manages to stop the Capulets and Montagues from fighting and brought peace to Verona because Juliet encouraged him to overcome his fear of public speaking (or something like that). In this scenario, Romeo & Juliet would get sidelined like a quarterback who threw three interceptions in a quarter, hardly contributing to the resolution at all or serving a passive role. It kind of feels that way with Patch and Willie.

Newt also has his entire character development and even a whole character arc (involving an inability to swim/fear of water) crammed into a few pages near the end. It's really strange. Like, if Newt was going to be so important to the outcome of this book, why not mention him earlier on? Why not describe his phobia on page five or something? Maybe tease him being afraid of going in the bath tub or something. Anything.

It just kind of feels like he gets dropped in there like a deus ex machina.

Anyway, with that out of the way... This is why the narrator, Heidi Immler, deserves a tremendous amount of credit. We can't say it enough: Heidi elevates this book (in audiobook form) in a way that not many child narrators can do.

This was not a small task. This is probably not the easiest book to read aloud, and it kind of shows.

You can tell that the narrator reads this book VERY methodically, deliberately, and carefully. The narration is very measured, likely because stumbling on any of the wordy, topsy-turvy, tongue-twisting passages or misreading any of these long, multi-part names could lead to a narrator having to reread a whole section. That could mean more time in the studio (meaning more expense), more time rereading and repeating the same things, and the potential for some mounting frustration. That does not seem to have happened here. Heidi sounds like she was having a blast, and everyone involved must have been smiling ear to ear.

Heidi sounds cheerful, happy, positive, and excited throughout the reading. She exudes enthusiasm!

Not only does Heidi narrate this book enthusiastically and efficiently, she also performs the voices of the different characters very well!

The voice she does for Willie is our favorite. It's very cute and friendly. The scratchiness of the voice is characteristic of the cawing sound that a crow makes (without becoming annoying). She also voices Zeke exceptionally well. She gives Zeke this deep, grumpy sounding voice which fits his character well.

Heidi also performs some fun accents like when doing the voice of Ma.

Other highlights of this book include the illustrations by Mike Minick. The expressions on the faces of the animals are particularly good. You really get the sense of what characters might be thinking or feeling.

We can also appreciate the footprints of crows decorating the interior. That's a nice touch.

The book also attempts to tackle some additional themes including the dangers of throwing caution to the wind or disregarding warnings. For example, Patch ignores Willie's warnings about the dangers of the pool and ends up learning the hard way.

It should also be noted that Patch shows a little bit of a mean-streak in this scene as she begins to tease, mock, and call Willie names. Patch calls Willie "Chicken" knowing full well that this offends and hurts Willie. This might be a good opportunity to teach kids why bullying and name-calling is wrong.
At the same time, it doesn't paint Patch or her friendship with Willie in the best light. It's a low point for them. It shows that Patch doesn't completely respect Willie as her name-calling and mockery is a sign of disrespect.

At the same time, you could argue (somewhat ironically) that this is a sign of great trust between the characters, even when they're disagreeing and arguing a little. After all, Patch trusts Willie enough to know that she can call him names and get away with it. This is something that family members often do. Siblings call each other names. Husbands and wives frequently argue. Why? Because they trust each other and trust the fact that—no matter how bad things get—they'll always come back together in the end.

Anyway, this is a really ambitious children's books that tries to tackle all these big topics and themes. It does seem to stretch itself thin at times, and it seems to succeed in spite of itself.

The characters are lovable, the illustrations are cute, and the narration of the audiobook is superb!

Ultimately, this is really a good children's book in terms of exploring different people coming together in a time of crisis for the common/greater good.

Check it out on Amazon!