The Wolf Wilder
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4.7 • 12 Ratings
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
Go on an adventure with Katherine Rundell...
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From the winner of the Costa Children's Book Prize
'A writer with an utterly distinctive voice and a wild imagination' - Philip Pullman
'A truly compelling read... totally original' - Jacqueline Wilson
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Feodora and her mother live in the snowbound woods of Russia, in a house full of food and fireplaces. Ten minutes away, in a ruined chapel, lives a pack of wolves. Feodora's mother is a wolf wilder, and Feo is a wolf wilder in training. A wolf wilder is the opposite of an animal tamer: it is a person who teaches tamed animals to fend for themselves, and to fight and to run, and to be wary of humans.
When the murderous hostility of the Russian Army threatens her very existence, Feo is left with no option but to go on the run. What follows is a story of revolution and adventure, about standing up for the things you love and fighting back. And, of course, wolves.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In 20th-century tsarist Russia, aristocrats raise captured wolf pups to perform as dogs, but when the wolves go mad, they send them to a girl named Feo and her mother, Marina, who "untame" them, so they may live in the wintry wild again. General Rakov, ruler of the tsar's Imperial Army, orders Marina to shoot the wolves; when she refuses, he burns their home and takes her prisoner. Feo plans to rescue her mother with the help of her best friends wolves White, Gray, and Black and Ilya, a teenage army deserter with "skinny wrists, but a muscly brain" and a passion for ballet. As in her previous novels, Rundell's (Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms) evocative prose offers startling imagery; when Feo, feeling abandoned, realizes she is not alone, "The moments in which the world turns suddenly kind can feel like a punctured lung." Fairy tale and history merge seamlessly; in a land where terror reigns and adults grow numb with fear, a "little wolf girl" outmaneuvers a sadistic general, awes a village, and inspires an army of children to march on St. Petersburg with dreams of justice. Breathtaking. Ages 8 12.
