Customer Reviews

Wolves

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Right off the bat I want to make something perfectly clear. I am going to give away the ending of this picture book and I'm going to give it away repeatedly. I'm going to talk at length as to the implications of what the ending means, how that ending fits into the larger scheme of children's book publishing today, and whether the ending is, in fact, any good at all. So if you like surprises in your books for the preschool set, consider eschewing this review. I'm painting a great big SPOILER ALERT here in bright red shiny letters, each syllable capped off with flickering lights and vaguely carnivalian music.

All set? Right-o. Now, I think I first heard about "Wolves" through the children's librarian grapevine. You know. The one where you hear someone say at a staff meeting, "Have you seen this book called `Wolves'?" I actually saw the book one-on-one in a bookstore, though, and it's no secret as to why I picked it up. It has an infinitely appealing cover. Pure white with just a fuzzy bunny, pointy nose held high and the straightforward black font of the word WOLVES above the tasteful maroon of the author's name. So I picked it up, gave it the old look-see, and found that it was like nothing I'd perused this year.

A rabbit goes to his local "burrowing" library to check out a book on wolves. While walking home he starts to read about those wild and wily animals. It turns out that wolves can survive in lots of places and that they can have forty-two teeth. As the rabbit reads facts like these, nose planted firmly in his book, he doesn't see that the characters in his story have seemingly stepped off the page. Wolves follow the bunny everywhere until, in a final moment of jeopardy, we see only the book that our hero was reading, torn and slashed to bits. On the next page, however, we are assured that in an alternative ending the wolf was a vegetarian and all ended happily. Of course, the two-page spread after that may tell a different story altogether...

There are plenty of picture books in which the protagonist dies unexpectedly and in a suitably humorous fashion. I am thinking of books like "Ugly Fish" by Kara LaReau or "Tadpole's Promise" by Jeanne Willis. If we're talking children's literary trends, this has to be acknowledged. Never before have so many books so willingly allowed the hero of the story to be eaten in an untimely manner. What does this say about our society as a whole? Haven't a clue. Maybe our kids have always been able to handle this dark humor and authors are only now responding in kind. I mean, how different is this mild violence from the Bugs Bunny cartoons and Muppet Show segments of our own youth?

That said, Gravett does something with the ending of "Wolves" that allows it to stand apart from its gently demented brethren. Gravett has invested a great deal of care in this story, and it shows. Once the bunny has disappeared with only a torn up book left in its wake, the next two pages show a single torn slip of paper containing the words, "The author would like to point out that no rabbits were eaten during the making of this book. It is a work of fiction. And so, for more sensitive readers, here is an alternative ending." Fair enough. But rather than draw an additional scene for the last part of the book, Gravett does something pretty clever. We see the rabbit and the wolf chowing down on a hitherto unmentioned jam sandwich together. The thing is, Gravett has taken a great deal of care to show a spread that squeamish parents will buy as a legitimate ending, and intelligent children will not. The text, first of all, is purposefully saccharine. "Luckily this wolf was a vegetarian, so they shared a jam sandwich, became the best of friends, and lived happily ever after." No human being on the planet could read those lines and not come off sounding like Glinda the Good Witch from the filmed "Wizard of Oz". Then look at the pictures. The rabbit is there, sure, and the wolf too, and they certainly SEEM to be eating a jam sandwich. Look a little closer, though, and it's clear that these characters have been ripped out of earlier illustrations and haphazardly arranged on the page. The jam in the sandwich is the same material as the book the rabbit was reading earlier. The jaw of the wolf hangs loosely from his head while the rest of his limbs look like they've been plucked from earlier pictures in the book. And even EVEN if the reader buys this ending, they've the last two-page spread to deal with. On a mat that presumably would be under the Rabbit's front door mail slot, a pile of letters, bills, and menus all addressed to G. Rabbit lay scattered. One of these is a library notice from the West Bucks Public Burrowing Library showing that the rabbit's book "Wolves" is now seriously overdue. Any guesses as to why?

And have I mentioned the art? I have not. Aside from what can only be called one-of-a-kind storytelling, Gravett is a wiz with mixed media. From postcards and envelopes to the cloth binding of the book the bunny carries with him, the real and the unreal meld seamlessly into one another. The rabbit is drawn but has a three dimensional quality. He has the ability to walk in front of montages that show what his book looks like as he reads it. Gravett's details are even more remarkable. When the rabbit leaves with a book about wolves you can see that one of the books left on the shelf that he could have taken has a rabbit on the cover instead. Stains are visible on the back of the rabbit's book and the very binding on the spine shows that it was published by Simon & Schuster (which makes me wonder if the original Great Britain version read "Macmillan" overseas). Actually, I think a lot of things were changed inside the book so as to render it Yankee friendly. Phone numbers are clearly American. Ditto addresses. And in a different vein I suppose a person could raise some kind of a stink over the fact that the wolves seem to grow bigger and the rabbit smaller as the danger rises to its peak. That, however, I feel was a conscious act on the part of the illustrator that allowed her to bring the climax to a fever pitch. Finally, the view of the rabbit's book, now criss-crossed with rips and tears and even a bite or two is worth the price of admission alone.

Recently I reviewed another picture book that, like this one, originally made its publication debut in Great Britain. When I talked about "The Opposite" by Tom MacRae I spoke of the distinctly English air the title carried in its wake. "Wolves" does not carry that same air, but it does have a distinctly foreign sense of humor. None of that is to say that American audiences of a certain stripe won't immediately latch on to what Gravett is able to do here. The real joke of the book is that "Wolves" really does contain actual honest-to-goodness factual information about the animals in question. A kid reading "Wolves" could actually learn a lot about those critters by reading this book. So you have your real with your unreal, your mixed-media and twist endings alongside your non-fiction subject matter and drawn characters. I hate to get all academic on you, but "Wolves" can definitely be read on several different levels here. Some kids will dig it. Others will stare at it with undisguised confusion and then demand a seventy-fifth reading of "The Giving Tree". In the end, Gravett has done the near impossible. She's created something amusing, disturbing, and never seen before. A great book if you know what you're in for and can appreciate what the author/illustrator has done.

Big bad wolves. We all know they're out there. Right? There's no denying it. So if you go to the Burrowing Library to check out a book on wolves, you do know to look right and left on your way home. Look behind you. Keep a 360 going because wolves are known to sneak up on you.

Tell that to our Bunny. You know how they are--they like to be scared! What's the scariest? Wolves. Bunny checks out a book simply called "Wolves." Wow, they look so real on the pages! Bunny, look behind you--a wolf got out and is in his Granny clothes. Bunny, look out, he's part of those trees just ahead. Bunny, you're walking on his feet. Please look up.

Until it is too late. The jagged tears on the book cover, the chewed ends show us the truth. The torn-out piece of paper with one word: Rabbits. We tried to warn the Bunny. But here's a note from the author: No rabbits were harmed in the creation of this book. And for sensitive children, here is an alternative ending: Torn out pieces from the book re-fit, cubist style, to recreate the new ending. Bunny and Wolf having a jam sandwich. Only a comatose child couldn't figure out that this is really just a fake ending. Besides, look at all the stacked up over-due notices lying at Bunny's door--unread.

When I finished reading this to my great-niece, Carolina, she gasped audibly, jerked her head toward me, scrunched up her face the way she does, and said, "Let's read another book." So much for alternate endings for sensitive children.

"Do you know what happened to the Bunny?"
"Yes, he got ate!"
"Does that bother you, Carolina?"
"No, Aunt Judy. It's a book. Silly!"

She's four. I'm way older. It bothered me.

Note: Actually, I love this wildly creative book!

Emily Gravett, Wolves (Simon and Schuster, 2006)

Wolves was an award winner overseas before finally getting published here in America, and it's easy to see why. This is a brilliant little book, funny and informative and supremely disgusting no matter what your moral stance. It's a must, especially if you've got kids.

A rabbit borrows a book on wolves (written, in true meta fashion, by Emily Grrrabbit) and reads it on his way home from the library, so absorbed that he never notices that the path has hanged under his feet as he's walking. It's the subtle things that make the first part of the book wonderful, like the way the rabbit's size decreases on every page as the danger gets greater and greater. Then comes the ending (and the alternate ending; the very idea of including an alternate ending in a kids' book is itself hysterical), and Gravett abandons the subtlety for slap-in-the-face humor that's actually funny.

I know I've said it many times in the last couple of years, as I've reviewed kids' books, but I'll say it again here: if most adult books were as well put together as the kids' books I've been running across, I'd have a lot less reason to be turning to kids' books to get a breath of fresh air. It often seems that the quality of kids' books these days is, on average, higher than that of adult books, which is truly depressing. But if you know where to look, you can mine the vein of kids' books for pure gold, and you find it in Emily Gravett. ****

Overall it's a very simple story of a Rabbit getting a book on wolves to learn a few things about them. The artwork is interesting My daughter liked the imagery used for the wolves as they kept getting closer and closer.

The one thing that did bother her was the page where there are two giant eyeballs right behind the rabbit and the rabbit has a wide eyed expression of "oh oh"

I diffused the situation by using a Bruce voice(the shark in Nemo) and saying "Hello Lunch!" She likes Bruce and thought it was funny.

She didn't get the implied meaning of the rabbit being eaten by the page with Rabbit's torn up book.

The alternative ending is funny as I think it's meant as a joke but I think my daughter liked it better.

I would say if your child is sensitive and doesn't really grasp that some animals eat other animals; you could delay this one for a little while.

Have you ever gone to the library to learn about something? Sure we all have at some point or another. Anyway, the main character in this book is a dumb little rabbit that picks up a book at the library on wolves and as the story unfolds the rabbit learns a few facts about the dog-like animal. Ultimately the little rabbit learns that wolves like to eat rabbits. I'm not sure the little rabbit found this out from reading the book or from the wolf he ran into as the story progressed. You read the book and find out.

I found it kind of odd that there were two alternative endings to the story. I would have liked the book better if there had been just one ending, but having two endings didn't ruin the story.

The illustrations in this book were quite imaginative. However, I was a little surprised that the rabbit was so small that he could walk on the bridge of a wolf's nose. 4 stars!

With a bland white cover with an averagely drawn rabbit illustration in the bottom left corner, has resulted in kids just not picking it up off the shelf, at least at the libraries I work at. Competing against brightly coloured, brilliantly illustrated covers of competitors with catchy titles, it's little wonder this book simply titled Wolves never really made it big. The book now relies on word of mouth to keep it circulating, and this one's hype was pretty big. Now I'm giving away the ending here by talking about that hype so don't read on if you don't want to know, but the whole point of this book's "check this one out" factor was that the main character, a cute little rabbit gets killed. That does happen, but I was left thinking, what that's it? We don't even get to see him get eaten, all we get is a torn picture of a book cover. There in lies the main problem for this book, younger age children (normal picture book reader age) coming across that aren't necessarily going to comprehend what just happened from an image of a torn cover. Likewise kids aren't going to get the flashback era of date stamping instead of computer docket roll receipts, Shhhh signage and other 80's era library references, simply due to the fact they haven't existed in their lifetime of using libraries. So therefore if we're not aiming the book at the young child market, why not go all out and have images of the rabbit's demise. In fact all the illustrations in this book are somewhere in between. The author/illustrator hasn't gone for cute or funny colourful illustrations that kids would like, a leaning towards realistic has been drawn but why not go all out and make them more realistic or graphic novel style. Plus the various wolves are of massively different scale, I get that not all wolves would be the same size, but some are in realistic scale to the rabbit and some have the wolves being King Kong sort of sized.

I did like how we have a fake alternative ending, sort of acknowledging extras on a DVD. I liked how the author wasn't afraid to kill off the main character and there are lessons kids can learn such as pay attention to where you're walking in the era or Ipods, phones and other distractions that kids use while walking. Maybe it would been better or more relevant if the wolves had been driving a car or something that ended the rabbit's life who thought he was safe in suburbia while preparing himself for all the stuff that could happen to him in the woods by reading up on his predators. If you stumbled upon this and were surprised by events as you turned the pages you may rate it higher, but with such a bland cover and title, that's pretty unlikely. If like me you've been referred to by word of mouth, Wolves is readable, but a bit of a letdown.

The illustrations make this book one of my boys' favorite books of the year so far. The different styles and the scrapbook/library book feel are original and clever. Your little readers, of course, are in on the joke as it unfolds.

Be warned - there is a non-specific violent ending, plastered over with a fake happy ending - this means my bigger boys LOVE it, but little children may get a bit freaked out by the scarred and claw-torn library book cover and the unclaimed mail...

This clever story stars a rabbit that goes to the West Bucks Public Burrowing Library and checks out a book about wolves. As the story unfolds, we see the rabbit-with nose in book-devouring factual information about wolves (ie. an adult wolf has 42 teeth), while at the same time being stalked by a wolf. As the book goes on, the rabbit becomes smaller and smaller, while the wolf becomes larger and more threatening. Eventually the rabbit realizes the trouble he is in, and the result is a partially eaten book and no rabbit. But never fear, on the next page the author points out that the book is a work of fiction and "no rabbits were eaten during the making of this book." She then goes on to provide an ending for "sensitive readers," that's very tongue in cheek and quite funny. If your child is quite sensitive, you might skip this book. But if your child has a good sense of humor, likes learning facts about wolves and appreciates looking at the subtle details in pictures, then this book is a good choice.

She can be so hard to figure out.

We've read a number of "darker" books. Generally, I find that the more comically they're illustrated and written, the more she'll enjoy them. The ones written in a more serious and realistic fashion tend to upset her and scare her.

So when she picked this one out at the library, I was dubious. Still, it's a short book, we could easily put it down.

Rabbit takes a book out at the library on wolves. He's so absorbed in the facts (which we read too) that he doesn't see he's literally walking right into a wolf's mouth until it's too late. He's clearly eaten, but just in case there are any sensitive children reading we have a deliberately poorly-done "alternative ending" set up. (Just in case they're really taken in, the buildup of mail outside Rabbit's door, including a very overdue notice for that book, tells the real tale!)

This book is written very dryly and very seriously. I would expect it to upset her - but no, she requested several re-reads. Go figure.

Read this before you buy, it might be too much for your kid. But if it's not, go for it. It's a good book if your kid likes it!

I initially wrote this as a COMMENT about another reviewer's post. Since that actually became a review in and of itself, I am just pasting it here (with some slight editing) as well, so it can be seen as a review:

I had heard about "Wolves" and was curious about this seemingly unusual children's book. It was a reviewer's comments which convinced me to purchase this book for my nephew. It was a mistake and I plan to return the book and never show this book to a child.
Let me start out making a few things clear: I detest "sappy" books, and the cited (in the other person's review) "The Giving Tree" might possibly be my least favorite book ever published; it is a horrible "role model" for, well, anyone. But Wolves goes TOO far in the other direction. I do believe in teaching children (and yes, I have 2 of my own, they're grown now, that is why I was buying the book for my nephew, not my daughters) the "realities" of life. They knew early on that carnivores are animals that eat smaller ones to survive. My pragmatic 2 1/2 year old daughter held out her dinner plate (25 years ago) and asked "More cow, please", so it is not the CONTENT of the book's message that disturbs me, it is the execution.
Textures? Not in my copy. Illustrations? Childish, simplistic, uneven, scratchy. Real facts about wolves? Some. Not a lot. There's a rabbit. He checks the book out of the "burrowing library". clever. He walks with his nose stuck in the book. We get some cold dry facts about wolves. We see a double page spread from the book rabbit is reading that tells us "In some areas wolves have retreated to places where fewer people live, such as forests and woodland." The illustration on that page is a canopy of 4 trees that form into a wolf. Not clever. Then suddenly, on the very next page, rabbit, with his nose still in the book, walks past 4 enormous wolf legs. Then up his tail. Then across his back. Then onto his snout - where the hungry wolf eyes rabbit, with a knife and fork in his hands. (Grey wolves are fond of kitchen utensils, I am told).
When the reviewer mentions the final view of the rabbit's book, "now criss-crossed with rips and tears and even a bite or two", he is not understating it. This is the most realistic illustration in the book, and it looks downright vicious. Not slyly humorous. Just disturbing. And, of course, no rabbit.
Yes, there is a disclaimer about no rabbits being harmed.
There is a ridiculous "alternate ending" (read the other reviews for more details on this, it was fully covered with no further elaboration needed).

Bottom line: "Wolves" - Thumbs down. Disturbing, Not amusing. Not for kids - or anyone.