The second in the series of phonetics readers is Joe the Crow . Joe the Crow is a playful story featuring the vowel sound in "Joe", "crow" and many other words that Ginger Wich uses to bring her character to life for beginning/new readers while showing them the various spellings of the featured sound. Just as in Neil the Eel , Joe the Crow enables readers to develop phonemic awareness and the concept that one sound can represented by a variety of spellings. Joe the Crow helps the reader to expand their vocabularies because they can see the ingenious illustrations the objects and actions that the words represent or, for abstract words, because they can infer the meanings through the depicted behavior of the characters. The language and illustrations of the story engage the eye, the ear and the imagination of readers -- exercising the faculties involved in the complex skill of reading.