From School Library Journal
PreSchool-Grade 3–Little Wolf longs to howl at the moon, but his parents are too busy to teach him. He turns to the forest animals for help, but Owl can only teach him to hoot, Frog's talents are confined to croaking, and Whippoorwill's to singing. Finally, Grandfather Wolf awakes and shows the youngster how to call forth a good howl. Lift up your head…stretch your neck…think of all the things you love…find the howl inside of you. Having done these things, Little Wolf lets loose with a tremendous howl that shakes the branches in the trees and splashes the water in the lake. Muñoz's watercolor paintings are suffused with white moonlight and humorous heartwarming scenes. Youngsters who long to accomplish a grown-up skill will readily identify with Little Wolf. Moka in Keiko Kasza's
The Dog Who Cried Wolf (Putnam, 2005) is another charmer inspired by a full moon.–
Marianne Saccardi, formerly at Norwalk Community College, CT Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
PreS-Gr. 2. Themes of intergenerational bonding and childhood milestones lend substance to this agreeable picture book, but most alluring may be the onomatopoeic title and its noisy reprises within. Little Wolf (not to be confused with Tony Ross' early-chapter-book character) wants to learn to howl, but his parents are too busy to teach him. After frustrating tutorials in croaking, hooting, and birdsong from woodland creatures, Little Wolf's gentle, wise grandfather helps him to produce an "enormous" howl that impresses the whole pack. Although the somewhat meandering story line may challenge shorter attention spans, many children will be drawn by Munoz's soft-focus watercolors, in which gently anthropomorphized animals (notwithstanding stylized features, these wolves go unclothed and gnaw bones at suppertime) wander a moonlit wilderness rimmed with mountains, where a rock formation echoing Little Wolf's baying silhouette gives sharp-eyed youngsters something extra to notice. Nocturnal setting aside, this won't work as a bedtime book: Little ones will inevitably want to follow Little Wolf's lead and "find the howl inside [themselves]."
Jennifer MattsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
