HOME OF THE WILD

A timeless story about being one with nature.

Although set in Scotland, this story could occur anywhere with tree-covered hills and valleys, deer, and humans with caring hearts. In the rural home of an unnamed boy and his mother, both with ginger hair and pale complexions, drawings of the animals the boy has helped and a bookcase full of field guides dominate a wall. The boy is clearly at home in the wild, and when he finds an abandoned fawn, naturally he brings her home to care for. His mother sets the limits: “She can stay till she is strong, / but the wild is where fawns belong.” While spring turns to summer, then to fall, the boy and deer, named Alba, are happy and inseparable. When the fawn returns to the wild, the dejected “boy sits silent, alone as the moon” beneath a pine tree, his head bowed on his arms. A sudden storm, gently but effectively evoked in both text and delicate line-and-color illustrations, sends the boy racing through the woods, “for he knows roaring storms / do not care about gentle fawns.” The boy is soon lost, but his once-helpless fawn “leaps, / from fallen tree to slippery stone” to become the boy’s rescuer and comforter. Terms specific to the Scottish countryside, like burn and glen, will prompt discussion, as should the caution to leave actual wild animals undisturbed.

Lyrical language and realistic illustrations honor the natural world and a loving relationship.