A story about a lost little girl who befriends nature to find her way back home. This story ties in feelings of helplessness, hope, and thankfulness to create a wonderful story between human and wolf.
What is this story about?
One day a young girl gets lost in the woods. She meets a grey wolf who helps her stay calm, think, and find her way back home. In the end, the young girl leaves a special gift of tobacco tied in a red cloth, as a way to thank the wolf for helping her.
Meet the Author:
Katherena Vermette
Katherena Vermette is an award winning author from Winnipeg, Manitoba. She is the winner of the 2017 Amazon.ca First Novel Award and the Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry. Visit the author's website, https://www.katherenavermette.com/ to find out more about her!
Meet the Illustrator:
Julie Flett
Julie Flett is an award-winning illustrator from Vancouver, British Columbia. She has won many awards such as the 2017 Governor General's Award for Young People's Literature- Illustrated Books and a three-time winner of the Christie Harris Illustrated Children's Literature Prize. Visit her website at, https://www.julieflett.com/ to find out more about her!
My Critique/Review:
I think this book was short and sweet. It was a beautiful story about nature and humanity working together. This book is filled with beautiful illustrations that depict the story of the girl and the wolf perfectly. Furthermore, this book meets my expectations of a good children's book because the illustrations and storyline is very engaging and original. This book is the opposite of what one would imagine, knowing the similar fairytale version, creating a suspenseful read. Lastly, this book depicts a great message about a strong, independent, female character who must reach inside herself, with prompting from the wolf, to solve her problem.
Thoughts:
The book, The Girl and the Wolf, takes place in an outdoor setting. From the pictures and author's words, I can tell this book takes place in a grassy forest, with few plants. This forest is made up of tall, skinny, bare trees and a stream that runs through it. This stream is where the girl visits to drink from at one point in the book (Vermette, 2019, pg. 16). Having the background image, being the forest, be pretty constant throughout the book, allows the reader to focus on the little girl as they read. I think this was purposeful on the illustrator's part, as the young girl is the central character in the book.
The artistic media of this book is paint. The illustrator supports the text by representing the author's vision on each page. She paints a constant forest image as the background throughout the book, but changes what characters, animals, or plants are on the page, as the story unfolds. Some common images I see throughout the book are tiny mushrooms on the bottom of the page, either a bird or a butterfly on almost every page, the mother, flowers, the young girl, and the grey wolf. One thing I noticed that the illustrator does to enhance the little girl, is by painting her dress red. On each page, the little girl is the main spotlight, while everything else is smaller or a duller color, making it blend into the background more. I think the illustrator does this to bring the young girl and the author's words to life.
Furthermore, the idea of agency stood out to me in this book. Agency describes the ability of a character to interact with others, come up with ideas, exert influence, and take action (Vaughn et al., 2019). In this book, the young girl is lost and must find her way back home. With the help of the wolf asking her questions, she is able to take a deep breath, really think, and look inside herself to figure out what to do next. On page 14, the little girl is stuck on what to do, but after thinking, she is able to figure out a food source (Vermette, 2019). After this, she again thinks and finds the skinny trees, which lead her back home (Vermette, 2019, pg. 18). In this book, she develops agency with the help and encouragement of the grey wolf she meets along the way. Even though it seems that the young girl had the ability to find her way home on her own, if it were not for the grey wolf's help, she may not have acted upon her ideas like she did.
One way I think I would bring this book into the classroom is through language arts. I would read this book to the class and then the similar, popular fairy tale, "Little Red Riding Hood". I would then have students create a Venn diagram, comparing and contrasting the two books. This would get students practicing comparing and contrasting characters, settings, and themes of two similar, but different, stories. This aligns with the 5th grade standard: "RL.5.3 Compare and contrast two or more characters, settings, or events in a story or drama,drawing on specific details in the text" (Department of Public Instruction, 2017). This can be modified for younger grades by doing this activity as a class, for example.
Making Connections:
This books connects to the book in my previous blog, The Wild Robot. Both books share a common theme of nature helping others. In, The Wild Robot, the animals help Roz, the robot, acclimate to a new environment and defeat the evil robots after him. In, The Girl and the Wolf, a grey wolf helps a young girl who is lost, find her way back home. Both these books recognize the importance of nature and how we need to be kind to one another.
Useful Links:
Little Red Riding Hood Children's Book: https://www.amazon.com/Little-Riding-Hood-Dubravka-Kolanovic/dp/1680524488/ref=asc_df_1680524488/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312057607871&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=9198134501649432479&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9010192&hvtargid=pla-574600468972&psc=1
Little Red Riding Hood Read Aloud Done by Kids: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrQ42bCfRsM
NC Standards: http://www.ncpublicschools.org/docs/curriculum/languagearts/scos/adopted-ela-standards.pdf
Venn diagram templates: http://unmasadalha.blogspot.com/2016/01/venn-diagram-template.html
Wolf Webcam: http://nywolf.org/webcams
The Wild Robot blog: https://sivretmr.wixsite.com/blog/post/8-must-read-books
Sources:
Julie Flett. Photo of Illustrator Julie Flett. Reprinted from TeachingBooks, 2019.
Retrieved from https://www.teachingbooks.net/tb.cgi?aid=15113
Katherena Vermette. Photo of Author Katherena Vermette. Reprinted from ROOM, by
Author J. Johns, 2018, Retrieved from https://roommagazine.com/interview
Vermette, K. (2019) The Girl and The Wolf. Penticton, British Columbia: Theytus Books Ltd.