This would be good for primary and intermediate students. For both levels it would be a good example of folktales and then could be compared to folktales from other cultures which could lead to discussion on how cultures are different and similar. The book is made of detailed pictures depicting aspects of Native culture, as well as a message of karma and what can happen when you undermine others. ( )

Two brothers - Spotted Eagle and Black Crow - fall in love with the same woman in this folktale from the Lakota people. Seeing that Red Bird responds to Spotted Eagle's flute-playing, Black Crow decides to rid himself of his rival, convincing him to ride out on a raid against the Pawnee, and stranding him on a high rock outcropping, leaving him there to die. But with the help of Wakan Tanka (the Great Spirit) and Wamblee (the eagle), Spotted Eagle escapes...

Related by Lakota storyteller Jenny Leading Cloud in 1967, and included in Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz's American Indian Myths and Legends (which information is provided in the brief author's foreword), this story was a fairly engaging tale of sibling rivalry, betrayal, and eventually, reconciliation. According to a review in Doris Seale's A Broken Flute: The Native Experience in Books for Children, the Bernhards' retelling is significantly abridged, with the protagonists changed from friends to brothers, and an overt moral added to the end. I'm usually someone who prefers the full version of a tale, so I think I'll have to track down the Erdoes/Ortiz volume.

That said, as I haven't read the original, I can't compare it - favorably or unfavorably - with Spotted Eagle & Black Crow. My two-star rating is based less on any dissatisfaction with the narrative, than with the artwork. Somehow, Durga Bernhard's pastel shades, which looked just right in Arctic titles like How Snowshoe Hare Rescued the Sun and The Girl Who Wanted to Hunt, don't seem to fit this tale of a people from the Great Plains. ( )