In this story, “first told in Julie’s Wolf Pack [1997],” a little Eskimo boy is given a wolf’s name: Amaroz, after the leader of the wolf pack that had saved his lost and starving older sister. “The wolf pack’s noble black leader had shared his family’s food with her.” One day his sister Julie comes home with two wolf cubs that are sick and hungry. Amaroz loves and cares for one of the cubs and names him Nutik. Julie warns her brother: “ . . . do not come to love this wolf pup. I have promised the wolves we will return the pups when they are fat and well.” But Amaroz does fall in love with the cub. The two become inseparable, and when the cub is grown and it is time to return to the wolves, Amaroz first tries to hide him, then reluctantly lets him go. Amaroz returns home, “His heart broken after all.” But then, Amaroz finds the wolf cub has returned to him to be part of the human family, forsaking the wolves. Rand traveled to Barrow, Alaska, to capture the people and landscapes in the story in watercolor and pencil. His pictures of Nutik are, of course, dreamy, and his focus on the boy and wolf help to indicate the isolation of the terrain. One interesting technique is a wash across the top of many of the pictures, which serves as a link between scenes and when in red indicates the 24-hour day. Night scenes of the dancing wolves, snow, and stars are particularly effective. As a young introduction to the Julie stories, this has great appeal, but it stands alone as a heartwarming story of a boy and his dog (or, in this case, his wolf). (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2001
ISBN: 0-06-028164-2
Page Count: 40
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2000
A lesson that never grows old, enacted with verve by two favorite friends
Gerald the elephant learns a truth familiar to every preschooler—heck, every human: “Waiting is not easy!”
When Piggie cartwheels up to Gerald announcing that she has a surprise for him, Gerald is less than pleased to learn that the “surprise is a surprise.” Gerald pumps Piggie for information (it’s big, it’s pretty, and they can share it), but Piggie holds fast on this basic principle: Gerald will have to wait. Gerald lets out an almighty “GROAN!” Variations on this basic exchange occur throughout the day; Gerald pleads, Piggie insists they must wait; Gerald groans. As the day turns to twilight (signaled by the backgrounds that darken from mauve to gray to charcoal), Gerald gets grumpy. “WE HAVE WASTED THE WHOLE DAY!…And for WHAT!?” Piggie then gestures up to the Milky Way, which an awed Gerald acknowledges “was worth the wait.” Willems relies even more than usual on the slightest of changes in posture, layout and typography, as two waiting figures can’t help but be pretty static. At one point, Piggie assumes the lotus position, infuriating Gerald. Most amusingly, Gerald’s elephantine groans assume weighty physicality in spread-filling speech bubbles that knock Piggie to the ground. And the spectacular, photo-collaged images of the Milky Way that dwarf the two friends makes it clear that it was indeed worth the wait.
A lesson that never grows old, enacted with verve by two favorite friends . (Early reader. 6-8)Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4231-9957-1
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2014
A solo debut for Wenzel showcasing both technical chops and a philosophical bent.
Wouldn’t the same housecat look very different to a dog and a mouse, a bee and a flea, a fox, a goldfish, or a skunk?
The differences are certainly vast in Wenzel’s often melodramatic scenes. Benign and strokable beneath the hand of a light-skinned child (visible only from the waist down), the brindled cat is transformed to an ugly, skinny slinker in a suspicious dog’s view. In a fox’s eyes it looks like delectably chubby prey but looms, a terrifying monster, over a cowering mouse. It seems a field of colored dots to a bee; jagged vibrations to an earthworm; a hairy thicket to a flea. “Yes,” runs the terse commentary’s refrain, “they all saw the cat.” Words in italics and in capital letters in nearly every line give said commentary a deliberate cadence and pacing: “The cat walked through the world, / with its whiskers, ears, and paws… // and the fish saw A CAT.” Along with inviting more reflective viewers to ruminate about perception and subjectivity, the cat’s perambulations offer elemental visual delights in the art’s extreme and sudden shifts in color, texture, and mood from one page or page turn to the next.
A solo debut for Wenzel showcasing both technical chops and a philosophical bent. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4521-5013-0
Page Count: 44
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
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