INTO THE WILD

Imagining something called “The Wild,” which might eat your shoes while living under your bed, might be easier for a 12-year-old than an adult. But The Wild doesn’t stay under Julie’s bed for long, and its identity emerges quickly for all readers. Once unleashed, it threatens to take over the entire community where fairy-tale characters live peaceful, ordinary lives in suburban Massachusetts. Set free by someone making a wish at the “Wishing Well Motel,” it now re-launches the characters into their stories. Julie, however, blames herself for setting the fairy-tale cycle in motion: She has wished that her mother not be her mother. She’s tired of being odd without knowing why, of entertaining the seven dwarves for dinner, of being picked up by Cindy in her orange Subaru and hanging out in the hair salon her mother, Zel, operates. Zel enters The Wild immediately to free the fairy-tale characters and stop its progression. Julie enters it to save her mother—and to learn her true identity and about the absent father she longs for. Deeper than most rewritten fairy tales, this existential story is chunked with big ideas about the fairy-tale genre, yet the story is lightened with touches that will connect with its audience. (Fiction. 10-14)