Wolves

Overall it's a very simple story of a Rabbit getting a book on wolves to learn a few things about them. The artwork is interesting My daughter liked the imagery used for the wolves as they kept getting closer and closer. The one thing that did bother her was the page where there are two giant eyeballs right behind the rabbit and the rabbit has a wide eyed expression of "oh oh" I diffused the situation by using a Bruce voice(the shark in Nemo) and saying "Hello Lunch!" She likes Bruce and thought it was funny. She didn't get the implied meaning of the rabbit being eaten by the page with Rabbit's torn up book. The alternative ending is funny as I think it's meant as a joke but I think my daughter liked it better. I would say if your child is sensitive and doesn't really grasp that some animals eat other animals; you could delay this one for a little while.

Big bad wolves. We all know they're out there. Right? There's no denying it. So if you go to the Burrowing Library to check out a book on wolves, you do know to look right and left on your way home. Look behind you. Keep a 360 going because wolves are known to sneak up on you. Tell that to our Bunny. You know how they are--they like to be scared! What's the scariest? Wolves. Bunny checks out a book simply called "Wolves." Wow, they look so real on the pages! Bunny, look behind you--a wolf got out and is in his Granny clothes. Bunny, look out, he's part of those trees just ahead. Bunny, you're walking on his feet. Please look up. Until it is too late. The jagged tears on the book cover, the chewed ends show us the truth. The torn-out piece of paper with one word: Rabbits. We tried to warn the Bunny. But here's a note from the author: No rabbits were harmed in the creation of this book. And for sensitive children, here is an alternative ending: Torn out pieces from the book re-fit, cubist style, to recreate the new ending. Bunny and Wolf having a jam sandwich. Only a comatose child couldn't figure out that this is really just a fake ending. Besides, look at all the stacked up over-due notices lying at Bunny's door--unread. When I finished reading this to my great-niece, Carolina, she gasped audibly, jerked her head toward me, scrunched up her face the way she does, and said, "Let's read another book." So much for alternate endings for sensitive children. "Do you know what happened to the Bunny?" "Yes, he got ate!" "Does that bother you, Carolina?" "No, Aunt Judy. It's a book. Silly!" She's four. I'm way older. It bothered me. Note: Actually, I love this wildly creative book!

Have you ever gone to the library to learn about something? Sure we all have at some point or another. Anyway, the main character in this book is a dumb little rabbit that picks up a book at the library on wolves and as the story unfolds the rabbit learns a few facts about the dog-like animal. Ultimately the little rabbit learns that wolves like to eat rabbits. I'm not sure the little rabbit found this out from reading the book or from the wolf he ran into as the story progressed. You read the book and find out. I found it kind of odd that there were two alternative endings to the story. I would have liked the book better if there had been just one ending, but having two endings didn't ruin the story. The illustrations in this book were quite imaginative. However, I was a little surprised that the rabbit was so small that he could walk on the bridge of a wolf's nose. 4 stars!

Right off the bat I want to make something perfectly clear. I am going to give away the ending of this picture book and I'm going to give it away repeatedly. I'm going to talk at length as to the implications of what the ending means, how that ending fits into the larger scheme of children's book publishing today, and whether the ending is, in fact, any good at all. So if you like surprises in your books for the preschool set, consider eschewing this review. I'm painting a great big SPOILER ALERT here in bright red shiny letters, each syllable capped off with flickering lights and vaguely carnivalian music. All set? Right-o. Now, I think I first heard about "Wolves" through the children's librarian grapevine. You know. The one where you hear someone say at a staff meeting, "Have you seen this book called `Wolves'?" I actually saw the book one-on-one in a bookstore, though, and it's no secret as to why I picked it up. It has an infinitely appealing cover. Pure white with just a fuzzy bunny, pointy nose held high and the straightforward black font of the word WOLVES above the tasteful maroon of the author's name. So I picked it up, gave it the old look-see, and found that it was like nothing I'd perused this year. A rabbit goes to his local "burrowing" library to check out a book on wolves. While walking home he starts to read about those wild and wily animals. It turns out that wolves can survive in lots of places and that they can have forty-two teeth. As the rabbit reads facts like these, nose planted firmly in his book, he doesn't see that the characters in his story have seemingly stepped off the page. Wolves follow the bunny everywhere until, in a final moment of jeopardy, we see only the book that our hero was reading, torn and slashed to bits. On the next page, however, we are assured that in an alternative ending the wolf was a vegetarian and all ended happily. Of course, the two-page spread after that may tell a different story altogether... There are plenty of picture books in which the protagonist dies unexpectedly and in a suitably humorous fashion. I am thinking of books like "Ugly Fish" by Kara LaReau or "Tadpole's Promise" by Jeanne Willis. If we're talking children's literary trends, this has to be acknowledged. Never before have so many books so willingly allowed the hero of the story to be eaten in an untimely manner. What does this say about our society as a whole? Haven't a clue. Maybe our kids have always been able to handle this dark humor and authors are only now responding in kind. I mean, how different is this mild violence from the Bugs Bunny cartoons and Muppet Show segments of our own youth? That said, Gravett does something with the ending of "Wolves" that allows it to stand apart from its gently demented brethren. Gravett has invested a great deal of care in this story, and it shows. Once the bunny has disappeared with only a torn up book left in its wake, the next two pages show a

Emily Gravett, Wolves (Simon and Schuster, 2006) Wolves was an award winner overseas before finally getting published here in America, and it's easy to see why. This is a brilliant little book, funny and informative and supremely disgusting no matter what your moral stance. It's a must, especially if you've got kids. A rabbit borrows a book on wolves (written, in true meta fashion, by Emily Grrrabbit) and reads it on his way home from the library, so absorbed that he never notices that the path has hanged under his feet as he's walking. It's the subtle things that make the first part of the book wonderful, like the way the rabbit's size decreases on every page as the danger gets greater and greater. Then comes the ending (and the alternate ending; the very idea of including an alternate ending in a kids' book is itself hysterical), and Gravett abandons the subtlety for slap-in-the-face humor that's actually funny. I know I've said it many times in the last couple of years, as I've reviewed kids' books, but I'll say it again here: if most adult books were as well put together as the kids' books I've been running across, I'd have a lot less reason to be turning to kids' books to get a breath of fresh air. It often seems that the quality of kids' books these days is, on average, higher than that of adult books, which is truly depressing. But if you know where to look, you can mine the vein of kids' books for pure gold, and you find it in Emily Gravett. ****