Woolvs in the Sitee - Hardcover

Wild, Margaret

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1590785002 ISBN 13: 9781590785003

Publisher: Boyds Mills Press - Front Street imprint, 2007

Synopsis

In a strange and sinister world, a boy must face his fears alone. Ben is hiding from the "woolvs." He has no family left, and he is running out of food and water. His only ally, Missus Radinski, doesn't believe the woolvs exist—until it is too late. Alone, Ben must go out into the streets and confront his fears. This Australia's Picture Book of the Year Honour Book and Kirkus Reviews Editor's Choice charts new territory in a book that is both beautiful and challenging.

About this title

About the Author

Margaret Wild is Australia's leading picture-book writer. She was born in Eschew, a small town in South Africa. Her brother's death at the age of seven inspired her book Jenny Angel, illustrated by Anne Spudvilas, which won the Children's Book Council of Australia Picture Book of the Year Award. Ms. Wild has written more than forty books, all highly acclaimed.

Anne Spudvilas is an established painter and award-winning children's book illustrator. She divides her work between commissioned portraits and children's book illustration. Her first picture book, The Race, by Christobel Mattingley, won the Crichton Award for New Illustrators and was an honor book in the Children's Book Council of Australia Picture Book of the Year Awards.

From School Library Journal

Grade 6–9—Shortlisted for three top children's book prizes in Australia, this picture book for older readers is the collaboration of an honored author and illustrator team. In a post-apocalyptic world, a teen protagonist lives alone in a derelict building. Terrified of the outside world and of the "woolvs" he sees there, the boy is tempted out of his apartment by what he misapprehends as a glimpse of blue sky. He is rescued by his only friend, elderly Mrs. Radinski, who ventures into the dark streets to save him. When the woman later disappears, the boy must reach deep for the courage to go looking for her. Every creative decision succeeds in making this a disorienting and harrowing story. Presentation of powerful themes is singular, the seemingly scrawled text being entirely phonetic with occasional invented words. The jarring reading experience, which readers will have to pore over, heightens the impression of a brutal, off-kilter world. Intensity is further magnified by Spudvilas's visual interpretation of the boy's world in heavy, aggressive charcoal line and watercolor wash, the palette dark with rare splashes of color. The wolves that terrify the boy are never portrayed. In the end, hope can be found in his determination to free himself from the crippling fear that controls his life. A final portrait shows him, brave but vulnerable, addressing readers, issuing the challenge, "Joyn me." This stunning title will best succeed with a visually literate audience who, growing up in a world of potential chaos, can read metaphor and appreciate ambiguity.—Kate McClelland, Perrot Memorial Library, Old Greenwich, CT
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Edition details

• Publisher: Boyds Mills Press - Front Street imprint
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1590785002
• ISBN 13: 9781590785003
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 40
• Illustrator: Spudvilas Anne