Song of the Crow Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

Book Club Discussion Questions

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For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, and our BookBrowse Review of Song of the Crow.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

1. Do you remember the creation stories of your religious or cultural upbringing, or from school?  What are they and how do they compare to Maheu’s version of things in Song of the Crow?
2. What other books and stories have you read or movies have you seen that use animals as characters?  To what extent do they seem like they are anthropomorphized (given human characteristics, behavior, and language)?  What examples have you read wherein different animals seem to be chosen to represent certain types of people, or human behavior, such as the pigs in George Orwell’s Animal Farm?
3. Have you read or seen books, stories, or movies that are more like what Maheu was trying to do with crows?  How successful do you think he was in trying to be as pure as possible to what crows would do in nature?  How good a job did he do, in your opinion, in imagining what crows might be thinking when they are doing something, as crows?  How appropriate did you think his use of crows was in telling this particular story?  What descriptive and narrative devices did he use to develop characters for the crows to distinguish them one from the other?

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Unbridled Books. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.