THE BOY WHO HOWLED

“Dad would sometimes pee on him, to mark him with his scent, and Mom would seem to smile, and everything would be right with the world.” Human boy Clam Firehead was raised by wolves, literally. The other wolves regard him with some embarrassment as their “furless mascot,” and it’s everything Mom Wolf can do to keep Dad from “feasting ravenously on his warm, bloody guts.” When this danger finally becomes too great, she steals a private-school uniform from a nearby camper and sends her precious cub off into the human world. Thus begins a positively giddy comedy of errors, as Clam applies his hard-earned wolf-pack lessons to Hargrove Academy for the Gifted, Bright, and Perceptive Child, slowly unveils shadowy memories of his pre-lupine life and happens to meet a girl who is exactly his height and has his exact shade of fiery red hair. While amiable satire and cheap laughs abound, an overriding sweetness prevails as the likable Clam ironically brings a good dose of humanity to the civilized world. (Fiction. 9-12)