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  • Published: 15 July 2017
  • ISBN: 9780141368726
  • Imprint: Puffin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 208
  • RRP: $19.99

The Crowstarver




A powerful novel for older readers from master storyteller, Dick King-Smith, perfect for A Puffin Book - stories that last a lifetime.

Discovered as a foundling in a lambing pen, Spider Sparrow grows up surrounded by animals. From sheep and horses to wild otters and foxes, Spider loves them all, even the crows he must scare away from the newly sown wheat. Crowstarving is the ideal job for Spider - he is on his own, yet never alone for all around him are animals of one sort or another. Amazingly, every animal who meets Spider implicitly trusts the young boy. This magical rapport is Spider's unique gift, but nothing else in his tough life is so easy.

  • Published: 15 July 2017
  • ISBN: 9780141368726
  • Imprint: Puffin
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 208
  • RRP: $19.99

About the author

Dick King-Smith

Dick King-Smith served in the Grenadier Guards during the Second World War, and afterwards spent twenty years as a farmer in Gloucestershire, the county of his birth. Many of his stories are inspired by his farming experiences. Later he taught at a village primary school. His first book, The Fox Busters, was published in 1978. He wrote a great number of children’s books, including The Sheep-Pig (winner of the Guardian Award and filmed as Babe), Harry’s Mad, Noah’s Brother, The Queen’s Nose, Martin’s Mice, Ace, The Cuckoo Child and Harriet’s Hare (winner of the Children’s Book Award in 1995). At the British Book Awards in 1991 he was voted Children’s Author of the Year. In 2009 he was made an OBE for services to children’s literature. Dick King-Smith died in 2011 at the age of eighty-eight. Discover more about Dick King-Smith at: dickkingsmith.com

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Praise for The Crowstarver

A powerful and heartwarming story... one of those children's books much enjoyed by adults

Times Educational Supplement

This book demonstrates everything that is good about writing for children. It is a book of love, trust and wonder thoroughly recommended to adults and young people alike

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