The Savage [Hardcover]

David Almond (Author), Dave McKean (Illustrator)

Book Description

Age Level: 11 and up | Grade Level: 6 and up

Mysterious and utterly mesmerizing, this graphic-novel-within-a-novel
pairs the extraordinary prose of David Almond with the visual genius of
Dave McKean.

Blue Baker is writing a story — not all that stuff about wizards and fairies and happily ever after — a real story, about blood and guts and adventures, because that's what life's really like. At least it is for Blue, since his dad died and Hopper, the town bully, started knocking him and the other kids around. But Blue's story has a life of its own — weird and wild and magic and dark — and when the savage pays a nighttime visit to Hopper, Blue starts to wonder where he ends and his creation begins.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 5–9—Blue is scrawny and nice. He is harassed by a big, dumb, smoking boy named Hopper. Blue's father died suddenly when he was younger. To cope, he wrote a comic book about a feral boy who gets to express his anger and loneliness through violent revenge, something Blue can't or won't do. Then parts of the story merge with real life. The characters' conversations and relationships are believable. The story is so thin, though, that there's little chance to care about the players. McKean's tonal watercolor panels, which illustrate roughly half of the pages, are full of palpable rage—gorgeous, frightening, and highly effective images. They set an ornery, mysterious mood that Almond's lackluster story never quite matches. Though the prose is clear and simple, the pace, in an attempt to build mystery, is too methodical for so obvious an allegory. The phonetic spelling in Blue's comic indicates a child much younger than the novel's somewhat confusing chronology indicates.—Johanna Lewis, New York Public Library
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From Booklist

A story-within-the-story that explores the means of handling grief forms the thrust of this compact book. After Blue Baker’s father dies, his school counselor tries to get him to write down and explore his feelings. “I did it for a while, but it just seemed stupid.” Instead, he secretly starts writing and drawing a story about a feral boy living alone in the woods. Blue’s story—which slashes into the narrative, the moody and ragged artwork a mirror for Blue’s inner turmoil—is interspersed with his struggle to cope with the loss of his father, run-ins with a bully, and difficulty reaching out to his mother and younger sister. The savage in his story is a violent, languageless creature who chases down, kills, and eats people who get too close. The line separating Blue and his imaginary savage becomes increasingly blurred, each bleeding into the other’s world, leading to an inevitable, though earned, catharsis. Avoiding sentiment, this illuminating book captures the staggering power of raw emotions on young minds, and demonstrates the ways expression can help transform and temper them. Grades 6-9. --Ian Chipman

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 11 and up
  
• Hardcover: 79 pages
• Publisher: Candlewick (October 14, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 076363932X
• ISBN-13: 978-0763639327
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 0.5 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #86,213 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #44 in Books > Children's Books > Social Situations > Bullies

More About the Author

author spotlight
"Writing can be difficult, but sometimes it really does feel like a kind of magic. I think that stories are living things--among the most important things in the world."--David Almond

David Almond is the winner of the 2001 Michael L. Printz Award for Kit's Wilderness, which has also been named best book of the year by School Library Journal, Booklist, and Publishers Weekly. His first book for young readers, Skellig, is a Printz Honor winner.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Miraculous beings living in a miraculous world . . .
Maybe it comes from my religious upbringing (I grew up in a big Catholic family): I do feel that we are miraculous beings living in a miraculous world. Sometimes the explanations we're given--and the possibilities we're offered--are just too restricted and mechanistic. Stories offer us a place to explore (as writers and readers) what it is to be fully human. I do think that young people are interested in the major questions--Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? Is there a God?--and they're willing to contemplate all kinds of possibilities. They haven't yet become tired by such questions.

Brutality has to be allowed its place . . .
Ten minutes of TV news is enough to convince anybody that the world is a pretty brutal place. We aren't yet perfect people living in a perfect world--and we never will be--so brutality has to be allowed its place. But the world also contains great tenderness, joy, hope, etc. I suppose that in my books I explore a world and people that are made up of opposites: good and evil, light and darkness, the beautiful and the ugly. And I hope that in the end, goodness, light, and beauty will have some kind of upper hand.

Stories as a whole form a kind of community . . .
The stories in Counting Stars don't have a straightforward chronological progression, but there are many links between the different stories. They form a kind of mosaic. Themes hinted at in one story are developed in another. Characters are seen in different situations/settings. I like to think that the stories as a whole form a kind of community or family. It's often said that there's a big difference between writing short stories and novels, but I'm not so sure. I think of my novels as a series of scenes/chapters, each of which I write with the same kind of attention I'd give to a short story.

A readership of four . . .
When I began to write Counting Stars, I wanted to write about my sisters and brother, and to use their real names, so I needed their permission. I worried that they wouldn't be happy about the book. So I invited them all to my house for dinner, and afterwards I told them my plans, and I nervously read one of the first stories, "The Fusilier." If they had said no to using their real names, Counting Stars would have been a very different book--and maybe wouldn't have been written at all. But they said yes! Over the next couple of years, after I'd written each story, I sent copies to my brother and three sisters, so that they could see how things were developing. So, in a sense, the book was written for a readership of four people.

Staring out of the window . . .
I write at home, in a little office overlooking the back garden. I scribble in an artist's sketchbook and type onto an AppleMac computer. I work all day--though some of that time will involve staring out of the window and eating apples. But I also travel quite a lot, so I'm used to writing on trains, in hotels, etc.

I used to wonder if I'd ever be able to write a novel properly . . .
For many years, I wrote nothing but short stories, and I used to wonder if I'd ever be able to write a novel properly. I wrote the stories in Counting Stars before I wrote Skellig, my first children's novel. I wrote them over a two-year period. As I wrote them, I found myself exploring childhood experience from a child's point of view. I rediscovered the powerful imaginative and emotional nature of childhood. Really, writing these stories changed me into a writer for children/young adults.

Messing about with paper clips . . .
I always wanted to be a writer. I wrote little books and stories as a boy, and wanted to see my books on the shelves of our little local library right next to my favorite books: King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table, The Day of the Triffids, and The Adventures of Turkey. But as for writing, I simply like it all--right from creating new stories to messing about with paper clips. The best piece of writing advice I've ever received: Don't give up.

It's often children who read the books with the most insight . . .
I think that children can be much more perceptive, creative, and intelligent than we give them credit for. I see this in the many letters I get from my readers and in the things that they say when I meet them. Some adults assume that children will never "get" the more complex aspects of my books, but in fact it's often children who read the books with the most insight.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Courtesy of Teens Read Too, January 19, 2009

By 

TeensReadToo "Eat. Drink. Read. Be Merrier." (All Over the US & Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Savage (Hardcover)

This is a strange combination of picture book and novel for older readers that is unsettling at best. A young boy's fantasy, the story and the illustrations are both filled with raw emotions that border on frightening and reflects the main character's own experiences and feelings.

Blue's counselor advises him to try writing down his feelings to help deal with the pain of his father's death, but that really doesn't work very well. Then Blue starts to write a story about a wild child who lives in the woods and who, on occasion, kills and eats people.

His story tells about the savage child interacting with Blue and his sister, and how the Savage hates the boy, Hopper, that bullies Blue at school.

McKean's illustrations show a wild child who is bony and shirtless, armed with a knife. Blue begins to believe that the Savage may be real, since he is sure there is evidence that the Savage visits him while he sleeps.

The idea that what you write becomes real is not a new one, and when the bully, Hopper, receives a beating in his bedroom during the night, Blue is sure that his fantasy has become reality.

Almost a graphic novel, THE SAVAGE is filled with fast action, suspense, and characters that are realistic. It is an exciting story that should appeal to the imagination of reluctant readers, too.

Don't we all have a bit of the Savage lurking somewhere just beneath the surface?

Reviewed by: Grandma Bev

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of man? The Savage knows., November 30, 2008

By 

E. R. Bird "Ramseelbird" (Manhattan, NY) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Savage (Hardcover)

By all logic, the melding of Dave McKean to David Almond should be a bad idea. David Almond tends to write YA novels with adult sensibilities gnawing away at their cores (and I include "My Dad's A Birdman" in that gross generalization). Dave McKean for his own part is a fan of creating adult centered graphic novels ("Sandman" most notably) and picture books with mature looks and feels ("The Wolves in the Walls", "The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish", etc.). So it stands to reason that if you combined the two together you would end up with something that a child wouldn't have a chance at enjoying or understanding. It would have to be something nightmare inducing, to say the least. Yet my encounter with "The Savage" came as a bit of a surprise to me. As feared it definitely has a slightly older readership, but the darkness of the images and the text work together in ways that actually reduce the scary factor rather than increase it. I wouldn't go about handing the book to a five-year-old but for the canny child of eleven or twelve, "The Savage" is a wild untamed release of instinct and pain. The kind of thing a lot of adults wouldn't trust a child to understand. The kind of thing a kid could appreciate (and understand) for sure.

Blue's father is dead so his school counselor tells him to write down his feelings to deal with the pain. "I did try for a while, but it just seemed stupid, and it even made me feel worse," so another idea presents itself to him. Without fully comprehending why, Blue starts writing about a savage kid who lives on his own in the nearby Burgess Woods. When Blue is bullied by a boy named Hopper he writes about the savage seeing and loathing the kid. When Blue is with his little sister he writes passages where they interact with The Savage, if only from a distance. Yet as Blue writes more and more, he comes to feel that the Savage is more than just words on a page. And when an incident with Hopper comes to light, Blue comes to respect his creation, though it is up to the reader to decide how much they themselves believe in his existence.

The idea that what you write becomes real has been made most famous by books like Cornelia Funke's "Inkheart" series. But there has always been a fear on the part of humankind that words could carry this power. Almond touches on this fear. If you could create a living breathing danger by simply writing about it, would you? Blue's anger and resentment at his own father's death and at the threat of the bully Hopper come to life in his Savage. Psychologically this could be seen as pretty healthy, but then that old "is this a reliable narrator" question comes up. Did the Savage really beat up Hopper in his bed? Or was that actually Blue, possessed by the creature of his own making? Some kids will be inclined to take Almond at his word. A small few, however, will not be so sure.

For my own part, I have an inexplicable urge to bite people when they start lamenting the potential psychological damage that comes with letting kids hear tales like Little Red Riding Hood or the end of The Three Little Pigs. Such violence! Such horror! In spite of the fact that generations upon generations of adults have grown up quite nicely, thank you very much, on the goriest of the gruesome Grimms, the parental instinct to coddle remains. I have few doubts then that "The Savage" will strike more than one grown-up as inappropriate child fare. Look at the boy conjured up in this story! He kills and eats people! How is that okay for someone under the age of 18? The fact that this character is only described as eating people and never goes so far as to do anything any worse than punching someone out in their beds, that is a fact they forget. McKean is probably the reason why they it forget too. Like a reigned in Ronald Searle, McKean's images give the impression that you've seen worse things than you actually have. It has something to do with his use of ink, I think. The splattered, wiry, gamy Savage suggests a whole world of decay and blood that never make it to the page but lie somewhere simmering just below the surface. It's "Where the Wild Things Are", shot through with teeth and flesh.

There has been some debate on what exactly to call this book. Is it a graphic novel? Not in the classic sense. There are no thought bubble or speech balloons, save one small passage. No clear cut panels or common comic tropes. But the words and the pictures do mix and match in new and peculiar ways. The term "illustrated novel" has been pulled out a lot lately to describe all these books that don't slot neatly into one category or another. I mean there's no other way to describe what a book like this is doing. The pictures and the words are interacting constantly, each one reliant upon the other. You could read "The Savage" without its illustrations, but it would be a weaker product. I feel as if you actually need McKean's gaunt, half-crazed figure out there to give the book the sense of menace missing from the text. McKean's Savage could do anything. He could hurt the narrator or destroy someone in the story we love. You begin to feel like the only way he's kept in check is through Almond's gentle words. At least I did.

So much of this book comes down to this melding of words and color. When Blue writes the Savage's story his misspellings add to the danger and threat. A sentence like "He crowched down and licked the blud from his hands . . . and gript his nife and watched," carries more weight than its well-spelled cousin. The font of these passages is meant to be childlike and potentially wild. So too are the colored washes that accompany the Savage's passages (since the only illustrated sections in this book are the ones that come out of Blue's brain) which suggest that McKean had some kind of plan in mind when he colored his inks. At first glance there seem to be only two colors at play; Green scenes take place during the day and blue scenes at night. But a closer examination reveals other shades and hues as well. Blue penned pictures appear in the midst of green sunny days. One small passage appears in a sea of green/yellow. And of course there is the single instance when blood is shed. For that scene the red stands out, turning purple in a long wash against the blue of night, traveling up the Savage's punching arm.

Wildness. Savagery. McKean and Almond do not fear touching upon these things. These psychological necessities in every healthy human psyche. Adults often do fear own their internal animals, however, and will often attempt to "protect" their children in some misguided attempt to shelter them from some of the darkness in the world. A little darkness is healthy, necessary even, in keeping us sane and sound. And "The Savage" alights on that little piece of darkness in us. I've little doubt that it will have a hard time finding its audience. Neither fish nor fowl, graphic novel nor prose, it sits on the fence between one art form and another. As a result, it will be punished for its fluidity. Punished for not being just one thing or another, but both at once. Fortunately, I have faith that those who find it and those that need it will come across it somewhere. Always assuming the adults in the vicinity have a healthy respect for the id. Wild unchecked stuff.

4.0 out of 5 stars Half story, half graphic novel, great plot, January 7, 2010

By 

Karissa Eckert "Devourer of all books fantasy" (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Savage (Hardcover)

I have previously read "The Skellig" by David Almond and really liked it. So, I was eager to read another book by Almond. When I saw that Dave McKean (illustrator for many of Gaimen's kid's books and graphic novels) had illustrated this I had to read it. The story was interesting but not what I expected.

The story is written in two alternating parts. It starts as a normal printed book with a kid, Blue, talking about how he wrote a story as a younger kid about a Savage in a notebook. He started the story about the Savage right after his dad suddenly died from a heart attack. Then there is a section from the notebook, the story is hand-written with bad spelling (as a little kid would write it) and drawings of the Savage's adventures. These sections alternate back and forth as Blue describes his life as it was then and then shows another story about the Savage. The twist to the whole story is this, it seems that the Savage is not just a story and he may really exist.

When I started the book I wasn't sure I would like it. The Savage is pretty violent and there is some starred out swearing. I started reading it to my young son, and then opted to stop because it was a bit too violent for him. Lots of cutting things apart and thinking about cutting mean people to pieces. Okay for a young adult or pre-teen but not for a young child. Also the mis-spelling in the hand-written portions of the story bugged me...but I understand that we were supposed to be reading the writing of a young child.

As the story continued I really started to like it. Especially towards the end. By the time I finished the book I was thinking, wow, this is a really cool book. It is very creative and has a very deep story and I really liked it!

This book is a quick read; took me maybe 40 minutes to read it or so. I really ended up enjoying it but I would recommend as a read for the pre-teen or older crowd. I got the book from the library and they did have it in the young adult section. I didn't like this book as much as "The Skellig" but it was still a good read. I will definitely be checking out more of David Almond's works in the future.