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WALTER THE WOLF by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat

WALTER THE WOLF

By

Pub Date: March 1st, 1975
Publisher: Holiday House

Despite his huge matched fangs, young Walter the Wolf is ""perfect"" -- practicing his violin, writing poetry and extolling the blessedness of peace. Then Wyatt Fox comes along with a proposition and despite Walter's mother's misgivings (""Wyatt the Fox, from the bottom of my heart I don't trust you"") Walter is persuaded to go into the biting business with Wyatt as his partner/manager. (""Do you want to spend the rest of your life being perfect?"" asks the fox) Naomi Beaver, Waiter's first intended victim who is also quite a biter herself, teaches him a lesson that puts an end to the partnership, but the unspectacular moral he draws from the experience is less important than the canny throwaway humor of the dialogue and the broad expressiveness of the pictures, which are colored in a sort of vulgarly pretty combination of turquoise, fuchsia and lime (a preschooler's favorite crayola tones) that somehow suits Walter's precarious perfection to a T.