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THE WAR OF THE WOLVES

Name: THE WAR OF THE WOLVES
Author: Gabrielle E. Scanio
ISBN: 978-1-4772-8290-8

by Gabrielle E. Scanio illustrated by Gabrielle E. Scanio ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2012

A solid first effort from an aspiring young author, despite flaws and an uncertain intended audience.

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Debut author Scanio’s YA tale of a young wolf who vows to take revenge against the pack that killed her family.

Luna is making preparations for her little brother’s coming-of-age howling ceremony when a sudden forest fire has her fleeing for her life. Once the fire dies down, she returns to her territory but is unable to find her family. She then travels and meets another wolf, Na’vi, who informs her that her family was killed. Na’vi also later reveals that his own family was murdered by the Desert Valley Pack, and he smelled traces of the pack’s scent around the bodies of Luna’s dead family. Luna and Na’vi eventually meet another wolf, Caleb, and his pack, and Caleb tells Luna and Na’vi that the Desert Valley Pack murdered his father, too. Later, they learn that Caleb’s brother, Bullet, is a traitor working for the Desert Valley Pack. Together, Caleb, Luna, Na’vi and their new friends vow to exact revenge against their shared enemies. After a series of skirmishes, the final battle looms. Luna’s story certainly has the potential to be a captivating one, as Luna makes friends with other wronged wolves on her path to revenge. However, the simplistic prose can be clunky at times, and scads of exposition tend to bury the narrative, leaving the characters short on depth and difficult to distinguish from one another. To be fair, some wolves do stand out, especially Blade, the black wolf with the rotten attitude. And sometimes Scanio lets her characters emote quite beautifully: “Tears ran down [Luna’s] muzzle,” she writes. “She lay down on the ground and covered her eyes with her paws.” But as a whole, the wolves aren’t particularly memorable characters, and readers will be left feeling little in the way of empathy as the wolves proceed to kill one another. The recurring violence may also be at odds with the narrative’s intended audience; the prose style and length suggest the story is meant to be cataloged as a chapter book, but it’s difficult to imagine parents of beginning readers being OK, for example, with Bullet snapping his own father’s neck.

A solid first effort from an aspiring young author, despite flaws and an uncertain intended audience.

Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-8290-8

Page Count: 80

Publisher: AuthorHouse

Review Posted Online: Jan. 7, 2013

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS

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CARPENTER'S HELPER

by Sybil Rosen ; illustrated by Camille Garoche ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 16, 2021

Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.

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A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.

Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)

Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)

Pub Date: March 16, 2021

ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random

Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S FAMILY

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LITTLE BLUE TRUCK'S SPRINGTIME

From the Little Blue Truck series

by Alice Schertle ; illustrated by Jill McElmurry ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 2, 2018

Uncomplicated fun that sets readers up for the earlier, more-complicated books to come.

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Little Blue Truck and his pal Toad meet friends old and new on a springtime drive through the country.

This lift-the-flap, interactive entry in the popular Little Blue Truck series lacks the narrative strength and valuable life lessons of the original Little Blue Truck (2008) and its sequel, Little Blue Truck Leads the Way (2009). Both of those books, published for preschoolers rather than toddlers, featured rich storylines, dramatic, kinetic illustrations, and simple but valuable life lessons—the folly of taking oneself too seriously, the importance of friends, and the virtue of taking turns, for example. At about half the length and with half as much text as the aforementioned titles, this volume is a much quicker read. Less a story than a vernal celebration, the book depicts a bucolic drive through farmland and encounters with various animals and their young along the way. Beautifully rendered two-page tableaux teem with butterflies, blossoms, and vibrant pastel, springtime colors. Little Blue greets a sheep standing in the door of a barn: “Yoo-hoo, Sheep! / Beep-beep! / What’s new?” Folding back the durable, card-stock flap reveals the barn’s interior and an adorable set of twin lambs. Encounters with a duck and nine ducklings, a cow with a calf, a pig with 10 (!) piglets, a family of bunnies, and a chicken with a freshly hatched chick provide ample opportunity for counting and vocabulary work.

Uncomplicated fun that sets readers up for the earlier, more-complicated books to come. (Board book. 1-4)