The Runaway is the final picture book in Nancy Vo’s Crow Trilogy, an enigmatic, atmospheric, and highly unusual set of stories set in the mid-1800s.
The first book in the trilogy, The Outlaw, features a man known for being the town’s troublemaker, who leaves and then returns to make amends. The second book, The Ranger, follows a young woman named Annie who meets up with a fox on her journey. The two end up saving each others’ lives. I wrote about it for PPBF in 2020.
The latest book, The Runaway, is about two siblings, a brother and sister, torn apart for reasons alluded to but left unsaid. In an interesting and effective choice, the first two wordless spreads set up the story before we get to the title page.
Readers should take time to absorb these images, because they’re essential to the story. In the first, a girl sits against a house and a young boy stands looking down at her, both of their postures sorrowful. In the next, the girl has packed for travel and appears to be saying good-bye. The boy refuses to look at her, because his heart will break if he does.
And on the title page spread, the boy has run to the window to peer at the shadow of the girl leaving. Then the written narrative begins.
Once there was a runaway.
This is a spare beginning, one that feels a bit like a folktale. The pocket watch holding the image of himself and his sister is the sole focus.
The next spread features a poster from the 1800s about how to avoid cholera, and the narrative continues:
He had many reasons to run, but when
illness took his ma, that cinched it.
The boy is now alone in this stark, harsh world. So he chooses to run away. We follow him on his journey, where he shows his resourcefulness. We slowly understand that he’s not so much running away as running toward—something. He’s really searching, but the narrative doesn’t specify exactly what he’s searching for. The reader must figure it out. Time passes, and the boy grows hungry. He camps by a river before being found by a couple of kindhearted people on horseback, who take him back to their settlement. There, he eats and works and builds up his strength to begin his search again. A search that never happens because his sister finds him. Turns out, she was always coming back.
I’d like to mention that the girl, Annie, from The Ranger is also the sister in The Runaway, something that dawned on me when I saw the fox at the end of The Runaway. It’s a satisfying connection.
The narrative (words and images) offers up at least three different interpretations of the story: 1) The girl is the runaway. We don’t know what she’s running from, exactly, but women often run for a variety of very legitimate reasons. 2) The boy is the runaway. Although he’s not so much running away, but running toward. And while the narrative points toward the boy being the runaway, the subtext leads me to believe that it is indeed the girl. 3) They’re both runaways, but running for different reasons.
In an interview from 2022, Vo mentioned that she doesn’t believe in patronizing or hiding the truth from children, but she does believe that tough topics can be dealt with respectfully through the interplay of words and images. I’d say she succeeds by leaving her stories open to interpretation.
Each book in the trilogy offers up a different theme:
The Outlaw invites readers to question what counts for restitution within a community. How can someone be forgiven? I love how the illustrations show a boy stealing food, and later that boy comes to the outlaw’s defense. (I still wonder if the boy in The Runaway is the boy who defends the outlaw, a question that could be debated well into the night.)
The Ranger, a story with a mystical element, explores the question of friendship and what is “owed” between two friends.
The Runaway reveals the power of a deep family bond that neither time nor distance can break. And it touches on community, as well, a community that takes in someone who could be seen as a drifter, inviting them to be a member. It reminded me of a few scenes from Karen Hesse’s Newbery-winning novel in verse, Out of the Dust, about the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.
The books in the Crow Trilogy serve more to spark questions than to provide answers, something I appreciate because U.S.-published picture books tend to offer up a moral on a platter. In contrast, Vo’s books create a sense of mystery that makes the reader want to re-read them, ponder, and come to their own conclusions (which may change on each reading). I think kids will find them fascinating, too, because of this mystery. No one is beating them over the head with a moral. Questions arise on their own. And perhaps each reader’s journey will bring a lifetime of different answers.
Which leads me to the symbolism of the crow in Indigenous cultures: it is a sign of intelligence, wisdom, and good luck. Our lives rely so much on the intersection of all three elements. So yes, I’m convinced that the decision to call this series The Crow Trilogy was not some random choice made by committee.
The limited-color-palette illustrations (created with ink, watercolor, and acetone transfer, using newspaper clippings and fabric patterns from the mid-1800s) provide a rich texture, and the terse language perfectly evokes the time period. Vo uses these same techniques for all three books. I always find myself trying to read the partially-obscured newspaper text, as if they contain hidden messages that might offer answers to each book’s mystery.
Can’t forget the end papers, vital elements in each of these books.
For The Runaway, the jacket and end papers create a sense of isolation and what it’s like to be a small person in a wide-open world. (Is it possible that the two buffalo in the foreground symbolize the siblings? With the crow in the lone tree watching over them and telling their story?) The crow flies away from the tree at the end.
The Ranger’s end papers are a topographical map with a crow flying through the lines of the map. Then the crow alights on a fence post at the beginning of the story and flies away from the fence at the end.
The Outlaw’s end papers hold darkness and light that flip on the title page and opening spread, perhaps to indicate how the story presents a kinder way to deal with transgressions, instead of the vigilante approach. Here again, the crow comes to alight on a solitary tree at the beginning of the story, and flies away from the tree at the end. The crow as symbolic storyteller, another brilliant touch!
Unusual. Gorgeously illustrated. Thought-provoking. Check them all out! The Runaway releases on August 6.
To enter in the giveaway for a copy of The Runaway, please comment below. If you don’t want to comment (or can’t comment, WP can be strange), please tag me and post on IG (@jilanne2694), Bluesky (@jilanne), Twitter (@Jill_SF) (I refuse to call it anything else), or Facebook (JilanneHoffmann). An extra entry for each platform. Entries will be accepted until July 31, midnight Pacific Time. U.S. only shipping. Cheers!
Activities:
If you were to write a fourth book in this series, what would happen? What would it be titled? Write the story.
Make a collage that looks like it came from a historical time period, using newspapers, earth-toned shades of tempera paint, and “aged” paper.
Make a pocket watch using this Thousand Oaks Library video as a guide. Then glue a small picture of you, you and your siblings, or you with a parent or pet to the inside cover of the watch.
Title: The Runaway
Author/Illustrator: Nancy Vo
Publisher: Groundwood Books, 2024
Theme: sibling bond, love, history, unspoken trauma
Ages: Elementary school to adult
For more perfect picture book recommendations, please visit Susanna Hill’s website.