The Wild Why
Stories and Teachings to Uncover Your Wonder
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected 8 Apr 2025
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- $15.99
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- Pre-Order
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
For fans of Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly, Glennon Doyle’s Untamed, and Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic, this illuminating self-help tool is the perfect book for anyone who yearns to rekindle their own voice.
What is wonder?
Wonder is curiosity and awe put together. We are born with our wonder intact. Why? What? How? Wow! Look at that rainbow! What makes a rainbow? Wonder is what we need to survive and thrive, not just as individuals but also as a civilization. It’s what’s lauded and honored by our society in young children. Until it isn’t.
The Wild Why calls for an illuminating end to this endemic crisis of self, and a return to what we know at birth and need to reclaim. This is a book of teaching, and teaching-spirited stories, all centered on how to find our true self-expression and the wonder that spawns it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Novelist Munson (Willa Grove) invites readers to tap into their creativity with this spirited if overbusy guide. Shamed as a young child for asking too many questions, Munson vacillated between giving free rein to her creativity in theater productions and her journal and adhering to rigid social rules at her boarding school. Describing how becoming a novelist as an adult inspired her to rediscover her wonder (the sensitive, curious, emotional part of oneself), she models—via suggested writing prompts—how readers can do the same by identifying their "wonder wound" (the person, place, or moment in one's life that dismantled their curiosity) and how it was perpetuated in adulthood by their inner critic. Reviving one's wonder can involve connecting to one's "liberated, wise, self-accepting" inner child and joining communities that support creative pursuits. Unfortunately, Munson's promising premise gets overtaken by her own responses to the writing prompts, with agonizingly detailed recollections of her struggles and formative childhood experiences crowding out useful guidance and lending this the feel of a repurposed memoir. The result is a well-intentioned but circuitous road map to reigniting one's inner spark.
