We’ve been reading an amazing picture book gifted to us this week called Wild by Annette Demetriou & Dawn White (illustrated by Ryan Sonderegger).

What’s it about?

Wild tells the story of two ‘mild’ wolves that meet a pack of ‘wild’ wolves who intimidate and scare them. But after witnessing the wolves being unkind to an elderly lady they stand up to them! And the elderly lady puts the wild wolves in their place. The story has a brilliant ending with the wild wolves apologising and being forgiven.

Whilst at first glance this may look like a nice book about some wolves…woven into to the book are important themes to be addressed (bullying, gangs, peer pressure and toxic masculinity) and morals to be learnt (standing up for what you believe it, handing bullies and forgiveness). It’s a must have book for your children’s bookshelf and school’s library.

What did we like about it?

– Exciting Story – First and foremost we loved reading this book! It’s a really brilliant book and perfectly strikes the balance between having scary parts of the story to make it exciting…without being too scary that it frightens young children. It will also have your children in giggles at the end! The main characters and relatable and lovable too.

– Opportunities to discuss bullying- Bullying is awful and it can be a very difficult topic to get your children to open up and talk about. But as we know, telling a trusted adult about being bullied is the most important thing to do. That’s why I adore that this book addresses bullying head on and through reading it with a child, it provides an informal way for children to open up about any potential bullying problems they made be having. It also helps children to feel less alone and to realise other people have also experienced bullying.

– Addresses important issues- Like I said in the intro, this book isn’t just a lovely story about wolves…it’s a really clever book. To children it probably just looks like an exciting story but adults will notice it manages to address important issues such as gangs, peer pressure, bullying etc. It would make a brilliant book to read together as a class in school- discussing and problem solving these issues as a class.

– Teaches children the importance of forgiveness- I really liked the ending of the book and how the wild wolves were forgiven and given some pie! I wasn’t expecting them to be forgiven but actually it provided an important moral. It shows kids the freedom you get when you forgive.

– Stunning Illustrations– I was expecting the illustrations to be good when I heard they were by Ryan Sonderegger…and they certainly didn’t disappoint. Absolutely stunning!

Please note we received a review copy for the purpose of this review. All words and opinions are our own.