When Jennifer Owings Dewey and her husband adopted the orphaned raven they named Clem, he was six inches long, cold, wet, and ugly. They made him a nest in a cardboard box lined with soft fabric, fed him twelve times a day, and fell in love with him. Eventually he learned to eat chocolate ice cream, which he demanded every day.

First published in 1986, Dewey's straightforward account of Clem's first year, illustrated with her beautiful drawings, won an award from the National Association of Science Teachers as an Outstanding Science Book for Children. But any adult interested in birds will enjoy these vivid observations of one little corvid's development and his relationships with other creatures in the Dewey household, including a bull snake, a burrowing owl named Clyde, and the Dewey family's own daughter, Tamar.