The Wild Girls [Hardcover]

Pat Murphy (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 10 and up | Grade Level: 5 and up

It is the early 1970s. Twelve-year-old Joan is sure that she is going to be miserable when her family moves from Connecticut to California. Then she meets a most unusual girl. Sarah prefers to be called ?Fox,? and lives with her author dad in a rundown house in the middle of the woods. The two girls start writing their own stories together, and when one wins first place in a student contest, they find themselves recruited for a summer writing class taught by the equally unusual Verla Volante. The Wild Girls is about friendship, the power of story, and how coming of age means finding your own answers?rather than simply taking adults on faith.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Pat Murphy lives in San Francisco, California.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 10 and up
  
• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Viking Juvenile; 1St Edition edition (October 18, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 067006226X
• ISBN-13: 978-0670062263
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,445,779 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wild and Wonderful, February 20, 2008

By 

L. K. Messner "Kate Messner" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Wild Girls (Hardcover)

The Wild Girls is a book for writers. It's a book for girls who don't always follow the rules and for girls who play with spotted newts. As a girl who enjoys writing, newts, and occasional rule-breaking, I fell in love immediately.

Pat Murphy tells the story of two girls -- the rule-following Joan (aka Newt), who just moved to California from Connecticut and has always written the kinds of stories she thought her teacher would like, and Sarah (aka Fox), who hangs out throwing rocks in the woods near the run-down house where she lives with her dad, a motorcycle-writer-guy who doesn't fit the image of any dad Joan has ever known. Fox and Newt form the kind of bond that can only be forged in secret clearings and treehouses, and together, they weather the storms of family trauma and trying (or not) to fit in among their peers. More than anything, though, they learn about writing and about the power of story to help us see truth -- especially when truth is different from the story that the grownups are dishing out.

Joan and Sarah call themselves the Wild Girls -- thus the title -- and through this new sense of self, they're able to confront questions that always lurked in the shadows before. This book reminds me of Clarissa Pinkola Estes' Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype. Women Who Run With the Wolves is non-fiction aimed at adult readers, but the spirit of the two books feels the same.

There are so many fantastic moments in The Wild Girls. My copy is riddled with Post-It notes marking my favorite passages. One of them comes when Azalea, a colorful character Joan meets during a writing class on the Berkeley campus, offers her a chance to try walking on stilts.


I hesitated, thinking about it. "I don't know. I'd probably fall."

Azalea frowned fiercely, shaking her head. "That is the wrong attitude. That's a Failure of the Imagination." When she said that, I heard it in capital letters. By her tone, I knew that a Failure of the Imagination was a terrible and contemptible thing. "All it takes to walk on stilts is imagination. If you believe that you can walk on stilts, then you can." She looked at me. "What do you think?"

What do I think? I think I after reading this book, I could walk on stilts...or jump across a stream...or...or....just about anything. It's empowering in that way, and that makes it a perfect choice for kids, especially girls who love to read and write.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Coming-of-Age Story, March 18, 2008

By 

Sunny @ the Library "sunnyatthelibrary.com" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Wild Girls (Hardcover)

Joan is not a Wild Girl when she moves from Connecticut to California. She's a very normal sort of 1970s girl who generally does what is expected her. Then, wandering in the lawns and woods behind her new home, she meets Fox, who is a very Wild Girl. Fascinated by Fox and her biker-looking father, Joan names herself Newt, and together, in the woods, she and Fox become the Wild Girls. One of the Wild Girls' favorite activities is making up stories, and when one rather unconventional story (and a very unusual public reading) gets them accepted into a writing workshop in Berkley, the girls' fiction will take them places inside themselves, each other, and ever their families.

The plot of Wild Girls may not sound very exciting, now that I look at it, but in this case the greatness is in the details. The relationship of Fox and Newt in the woods, versus in school. The way the Wild Girls persona allows them to create a mask -- and explore more ideas than they normally might. The meticulously documented journey of self-discovery. Watching Newt's mother move from a cardboard mom-figure to a real person in her daughter's eyes. The exploration of female relationships... Oh, I could go on! It was just so satisfying!

"A sweet, compelling, coming-of-age story" sounds like a boring way to sum it up, but I'll have to leave it there. I want you to discover how Wild Girls ripens all by yourself! Great for girl readers (this is really not a boy's book) in that difficult cusp now known as "tweendom" and a GREAT choice for the budding writer in your life.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I loved The Wild Girls, October 20, 2007

By 

S. Pederson (San Mateo, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Wild Girls (Hardcover)

I love this book.

I don't want to give any spoilers about the content, and I think there's enough information about the book at Pat Murphy's site and here on Amazon for readers to learn about that. The book itself is just really good.

Plus, it makes me want to
1. write more, and
2. also get to know my mom better via the questions that Joan and Fox learn to ask in the book (unfortunately this is not possible for me, except via #1).

Pat has written that she wrote the book for the twelve-year-old that she once was, and I feel like she wrote it for the twelve-year-old that I was also. And for the 33-year-old that I am now (and all the ages in between).
I bought an extra copy for my 13-year-old niece.
The woman working at the bookstore where I bought the book (Sorry Amazon, I went for a local bookstore on this one) told me that she has been waiting for this book "for years!"