The Raven’s Song
“Yes, I know people in the old days lived in giant mega-cities smothered in dirty clouds … and parts of the honoured and natural world died and the seas rose and we invaded the wild areas and new diseases took hold and killed most of their children and now we have to stay in our townships and keep our hair short and our hands clean and not make a peep of pollution and not increase our numbers even by one. … Three hundred and fifty kind, ethical, truthful people on seven hundred hectares or not at all.” (25)
Shelby Jones, one of the two protagonists of The Raven’s Song, is an egg farmer living in a small, sustainable community in the 2100s. When she ventures beyond the community’s fence to track a sheep-stealing tiger, she discovers a ruined city where an eccentric old man struggles to care for strange eggs that contain twenty-first-century children cryonically frozen at the start of the Corvic26 pandemic, still waiting to be cured and resurrected.
Shelby’s viewpoint alternates with that of Phoenix, a quiet boy whom his aunt considers “troubled,” who inhabits that city a hundred years earlier. Phoenix has visions of ravens and a prehistoric girl sacrificed in the local bog, which cryptically warn him that a deadly virus is re-emerging from birds preserved in the bog and offer clues to the cure. In a hard-hitting but beautiful ending, Phoenix turns out to be one of the children preserved in the eggs that Shelby discovers; when she wakes him, he realizes it’s too late to save his family but finds comfort in the recovering natural world.
The Raven’s Song illustrates how interconnectedness between species determines human health, warning readers to remember that interconnectedness through its depiction of a world-changing pandemic and inspiring them with its portrait of an ecological civilization. Both the cause and cure for the pandemic emphasize humans’ interconnectedness with other species: the disease emerges from ancient birds in a bog, uncovered after a climate-change-induced drought, and a rare beech seed is needed for the cure. A prehistoric community finds the cure, surviving the disease, but the twenty-first-century world’s bird-killing solution fails, stressing that respect for nature increases human resilience.
Shelby’s ecological civilization models sustainability as the township uses the minimum land needed to produce local food, leaving the rest of nature for regrowth. Her friendships and experiences are restricted by her small community, but she is happy; the book provides a wealth of details for classroom discussions of ecological utopias. While Phoenix suffers the consequences of global warming, Shelby proudly shares her climate literacy with readers, emphasizing personal and community responsibilities to nature.
©2024 Climate Lit (Catherine Olver)
More.
- Teacher’s notes: https://www.oldbarnbooks.com/products/the-ravens-song-1
- Authors’ reading & writing workshop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEX-xdlASnY
- Video Q&A with authors: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lawJJFzn3Kc
Publisher: Old Barn Books, 2022
Pages: 278
ISBN: 9781910646854
Audience: Ages 8-13
Format: Novels
Topics: Climate Change, Climate Literacy, Ecological Civilization, Global Warming, Interconnectedness, Local Food Movement, Regrowth, Resilience, Sustainability
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