Wolves

Product Information

Apr 2012 update: One of our oldest daughter's classmates read this book aloud to a group of us during 'partner-read' time in her third grade class. She earned a "Highly Commended" then and won the prize in her final year, when she entered two books that the judges ranked first and second. The front cover illustration shows the title Little Mouse's Emily Gravett's Big Book of Fears, a mouse looking through a hole it has chewed, and damage along the book edges.

For 2008 Gravett was official illustrator for World Book Day (United Kingdom) — an honor with duties such as specially commissioned illustrations and recorded demonstration of characters from her books. I appreciate the trick that Gravett made, namely the fact that the book about wolves is “inside” the book about the rabbit. By reading The Wolves in the Walls (Dave McKean and Neil Gaiman), Wolves (Emily Gravett), and Top Gun of the Sky (Martin Bradley), children will investigate non-chronological reports.And I had got to Sunday night and I had to hand in this project on the Monday, and I had been reading this book, Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, which is about grammar, because my grammar is really, really, really bad. I love the breaking of the 4th wall and the 'attempt' by the author to change the story into a happy one at the end. The illustrations give dimension and create the feeling that characters and elements are coming off the page and each have a unique perspective in terms of size and focus.

The winning title, Wolves,was published by Macmillan Children's Books and went on to win the Kate Greenaway Medal, the Boston Globe Horn Book Honor Award for Illustration and was also a runner up for the Smarties prize. I change it a little bit, but—so… The ending is very accidental cause originally I was thinking, “Well, I can’t actually let this rabbit die in the book. And then the older they get, the more blood-thirsty they get and they like to believe that the rabbit is dead, which is fine by me! I was influenced by one of my favourite picture books Pat Hutchins’ Rosie’s Walk, where Rosie the hen is oblivious to all danger around her.These are the acrobats of the insect world and with their stunning colours are a true sign of summer.