Wolf Story (New York Review Collections (Hardcover)) - Hardcover

McCleery, William

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1590175891 ISBN 13: 9781590175897

Publisher: NYR Children's Collection, 2012

Synopsis

This irresistible book is about: a father; his five-year-old son, Michael (intelligent, crafty, addicted to stories); Michael’s best friend Stefan (stalwart listener, equally addicted to stories); and, well—what else?—a story. 

Oh, and a wolf. It is as Michael always demands: a Wolf Story, which begins one night at bedtime and spins wildly on through subsequent bedtimes and Sunday outings to the beach and park in a succession of ever more trickily tantalizing episodes. Waldo the wolf is sneaking up on Rainbow the hen, when Jimmy Tractorwheel, the son of the local farmer, comes along. After that, there’s no knowing what will happen next, as while stalled in traffic jams or nodding off at night, the boys chime in and the story races on and Waldo finds, if not necessarily dinner, his just desserts.

First published in 1947 and wonderfully illustrated by Warren Chappell, William McCleery’s Wolf Story is a delicious treat for fathers and sons and daughters and mothers alike.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

ony Heald
One cassette / 1 hour 8 mins.

Take one young boy, his father and their bedtime ritual--a story.  Five-year-old Michael has somehow managed it so that he gets to order up the basic ingredients of each night's story, whereupon Dad spins the tale and adds the embellishments.  The only thing is, Michael doles out the same essential ingredients each time:  a foppish wolf named Waldo and a hen named Rainbow.  As bedtimes go by, the stories become more and more outlandish.  Not only that, they spread out into the daytime, too!  So what used to be bedtime ritual is now an anytime-he-can-get-his-Dad-to-squeeze-in-an-eipsode arrangement.  And as the delightfully absurd story unfolds (and unfolds even more) we can't help smiling while whitnessing the eternal battle between good and evil as orchestrated by a five-year-old boy.  It's no wonder that this endearingly funny and down-to-earth class

About the Author:

William McCleery (1911–2000) was born in Nebraska and spent his early career as a newspaper reporter and magazine editor. In the 1940s two of his plays were produced on Broadway, and he later wrote some dozen one-hour dramas for television. From the 1960s until his death he was affiliated with Princeton University, where he taught playwriting, founded the magazine University: A Princeton Quarterly, and edited several volumes of university history. McCleery was a trustee of the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire from 1948 to 1970, and it was there that he wrote Wolf Story for his son Michael.
 
Warren Chappell (1904–1991) was a graphic artist, book illustrator, and typographer. He illustrated many books for children and adults, including three in collaboration with John Updike; created two highly regarded typefaces, Lydian and Trajanus; and wrote several books on typography, among them A Short History of the Printed World.

About this edition

• Publisher: NYR Children's Collection
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1590175891
• ISBN 13: 9781590175897
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 88
• Illustrator: Chappell Warren