A Horse Named Sky by Rosanne Parry

A horse named Sky  is born into a family of horses that includes Mother, Auntie Gale and Auntie Rain, their stallion Thunder, and Rain's filly, Storm. Sky looks up to Storm who can run like the wind and he spends the seasons trying to catch her. Sky also learns that he must run from the "howlers", and that speed is strength. He also learns many other things from his family: Auntie Gale tells Sky to "watch for the claw beast", while Auntie Rain tells him not to eat the purple flowers.

Storm, as a filly, will stay with the mares, but Sky who is a stallion must soon either fight Thunder or move on.

One summer day, after several more seasons have passed, Sky and Storm wonder at the humans arriving with their "draggers", pulling various heavy loads. They have seen humans before: in the past "buckskin-dun humans with black manes" (Indians) have come to take the cones off the pinon trees for their seeds, and harvest sage. But the two mustangs note that the new humans are not interested in the seeds. Sky thinks they have come for the trees. Thunder tells them to avoid the humans.

The summer heat continues into the fall and the horses struggle to find food and water. Jack, the old burro stallion rounds up his jennies and leaves, telling Sky he is taking them to a place where there is a single mountain and a swift river. Auntie Gale leads the mares and their foals, and the colts to a spring which bubbles out of the ground on a rock. Although Sky is the last to drink, he is thankful. However, as the drought continues, Sky is frequently chased away by Thunder, who wants what little water there is for his mares.

As the spring begins to dry up, Sky knows the time for him to leave has come. Storm doesn't want him to leave though. Sky tries to follow the rain clouds, walking across the steppe. He remembers that water goes into ravines, so that's where he walks and he soon finds water...and meets up with Storm. Sky is surprised to see Storm, telling her "mares don't leave", but she tells him they can choose. However, Sky and Storm's freedom and time together is short-lived.

While tasting salt-licks, suddenly a group of humans riding large horses charge out of the brush and give chase to Sky, Storm and three brother stallions. The horses race across the steppe and into a narrow canyon where they hope to hide. However, they quickly find themselves trapped and Sky and several of the stallions are taken captive. Soon Sky finds himself pressed into running for the Pony Express. But no matter how well he's treated, with delicious food, rubs and shelter, the urge to be free and to reunite with his family and find Storm make him determined to escape.

Discussion

A Horse Named Sky is another well-told animal story by Rosanne Parry. This time she imagines an engaging story about a mustang stallion living with his family band in the Virginia range east of Reno, Nevada. In Sky's family band, Thunder is the adult stallion and some of his mares include Sky's mother, and his Aunties Gale and Rain. The story is told from the perspective of the young stallion, Sky. Since Sky is narrating, he uses language that describes what he sees and experiences in the way a horse might: human arms are "front legs", hands are "grabbers", oxen are "draggers", a cougar is a "claw beast", human adults are "stallions" and a human child is a "colt". 

In the first chapters, Parry describes Sky's life as a young wild horse growing quickly in the Virginia Range. This area is home to the single-leaf pinon pine, from which the Indigenous peoples of the area, the Paiute, Washoe and Shoshone, collected nuts for food. Sky refers to them as "buckskin-dun humans with black manes". Life is good, with the mustangs able to outrun the "claw beast" to find food and water. Sky quickly grows into a young stallion. His best friend is a young mare, Storm who can run very fast. This almost idyllic life will be in contrast to the experiences Sky will soon have and the changes to his homeland that will come about with the arrival of more humans. 

Drought hits their homeland and the mustangs must move to find water. Although Sky strikes out on his own, everything changes when he is captured and  sold into the Pony Express. Storm and their family band, he later discovers, ends up working in a silver mine. 

From the beginning of his capture, Sky struggles with the loss of his family band. "Every day, for days on end, I've missed my family with a dull ache like the cold. But now I miss them sharp, like a broken bone." Despite being well treated, fed good food, cleaned and given water, Sky misses freedom. "I feel the tug of the homeward horizon, and no amount of water or crunchy bits will make me feel better."  Sky is determined to escape and find his way back to Storm whom he believes is free. The loss of freedom, being forced to carry humans, and travel treacherous mountain routes make him even more determined. To that end Sky's determination and intelligence leads him to learn the signs that will help him get home and to try to earn the trust of the humans in the hope they will eventually stop tying him up at night. It is when Sky learns to undo the wooden bar that locks him in, that his chance for freedom comes.

Parry incorporates a number of historical events within the story: the Pony Express which ran from Missouri to California from 1860 into the fall of 1861 , the presence of dromedaries purchased by the U.S. Army and which Sky encounters on the mountain trail, the arrival of silver mining in the Virginia Range in 1859 which decimates the delicate ecosystem of Sky's homeland through clear cutting all the trees and poisoning the waterways, and the indenture of Indigenous peoples as a result of the California Indian Act of 1850. 

Of all the humans Sky encounters, it is a young Paiute boy  whom he describes as "a buckskin human with a black mane" who "looks like one of the pinon gatherers"  who has the most impact. Like Sky, the Paiute boy is enslaved, creating a bond between them. Sky refers to the boy as a colt: he "is too big for a yearling, but he is definitely not of fighting age. A cold, then." This Paiute boy  takes good care of Sky. When he rests his head on Sky's shoulder, Sky thinks, "I've missed this so much -- a friend to lean on at the end of the day."  However, Sky also witnesses him being maltreated, noticing that he is not fed in the morning, and beaten by the older man at the Pony Express station, It is an action the young stallion cannot comprehend.  "When colt comes outside, there's a fight mark on his face. He's shaking from head to foot. I don't understand. A stallion only fights another grown stallion....The salty-faced colt is no stallion to be sparred with. He's far too tender for such rough treatment."  Eventually, Sky witnesses the young Paiute boy being freed by his father and he decides it's time for freedom too!

One of the most poignant scenes in the novel is when Sky arrives at his home, only to see how it has been devastated. There are no birds in the air, no animals on the ground and the trees are gone. Instead, Sky sees knee-high stumps with sage and  grasses left.

Sky not only undergoes a journey home, but also a personal journey from an insecure young stallion to one who not only rescues his entire enslaved family band but leads them to safety. He is a courageous leader, willing to risk his life for family and friends.

A Horse Named Sky is another wonderful animal story by American author, Rosanne Parry. The novel is filled with beautiful pencil sketches done by Kirbi Fagan, and which add so much to the story-telling. Parry has included a Map of Sky's journey (which would be better situated at the front of the novel), detailed notes titled, Wild Horses in North America, Horse Families, About Mustangs, The Habitats, Water Before Everything, The Pony Express, Silver Mining in Nevada, and the California Indian Act of 1850. There is also a short Author's Note and Artist's Note, and a list of Selected Sources for further reading, and a List of parks, museums and wildlife refuges in the Great Basin.

Book Details:

A Horse Named Sky by Rosanne Parry
New York: Greenwillow Books     2023
260 pp.

Written In Stone by Rosanne Parry

Written In Stone  is the story of thirteen-year-old Pearl Carver, a member of the Makah tribe. The story begins in 1999 with eighty-nine-year-old Pearl walking to the beach with her great-granddaughter, Ruby to see the whales. The smell of the beach and of the whales bring back memories of the summer when Pearl was thirteen.

The story flashes back to the summer of 1923. Pearl's father is Victor Carver, the best whaler of the Makah Nation. Her father and grandfather were Makah whalers, her "mother was a Tlingit princess from the northern tribes, a weaver of the famous Chilkat blankets." Her grandmother was from the Quinault Nation in the south. Pearl's mother and baby sister died five years ago, in 1918, leaving just Pearl and her father. The war in Europe was over and returning soldiers brought home the deadly influenza. For two days her mother and sister were sick before they finally died. In their village of one hundred, sixty-one graves were dug.

Now Pearl and her village, including her uncle and her grandmother, are anxiously awaiting the return of the whalers who left three days ago. After relieving her cousin Charlie from watching at the look-out, Pearl thinks back to how her people have given up their traditions. On her watch, Pearl spots the returning whalers and runs home to inform the village. But when the whalers arrive, Pearl's father is not among them.

Reeling from this loss, the village is visited two days later by the Indian agent on a "condolence" call. Instead, he dishonours  Pearl's dead father with the frequent use of his name and suggests that Pearl be sent to the Indian school, Chemawa in Oregon since she is now an orphan. 

Because holding a potlatch leads to jail and the confiscating of tribal regalia, Pearl and her family decide to have a secret one. The feast and gift-giving is held in a secret location in a cave,  on Tatoosh Island with only the men in attendance. But Pearl makes a plan to secretly attend. Having witnessed her father burning all of her mother's clothing and belongings, she desperately wants "something of my father's to keep". 

At the feast in their longhouse, Pearl learns what happened on the whale hunt, how they saw an old scarred whale with a fresh wound. Her father was about to drive the harpoon into the whale when Uncle Jeremiah's son, Henry yelled and the whale dove deep. Pearl's father leapt into the water hoping to harpoon the whale but it dove deep taking him with it and overturning their boat. All that surfaced was the harpoon broken into two pieces. On their way home, they encountered a whaling ship that has hunted more than twenty whales. Stunned by this waste, the Makah whalers now know where their whales have gone.

 

When her grandmother realizes that Pearl intends to secretly travel to the potlatch, she offers something better for her: she has Pearl do a naming of family attending the potlatch while Grandma tells her the gifts they will receive.

After the potlatch and the feast, Pearl and her family must now decide how they will survive, without the prospect of whale meat and oil. Pearl considers whether she should live as the white man does or is there perhaps another way? As she struggles to deal with her own inner conflict, a deceitful wildcatter looking for oil and gas but masquerading as an art dealer, shows up. In a race to return home to protect her father's Raven masks, Pearl unexpectedly gets marooned at the Seal Hunter's Beach, where she makes a startling discovery that changes everything.

Discussion

Written In Stone is the heart-stirring fictional story of a young Makah girl who's determined to preserve her way of life and the memory of her culture for herself and her future children during a time of enormous change. In this beautifully written novel, Parry portrays an Indigenous way of life deeply connected to the natural world while greatly at odds with the European culture overtaking them.

The story is set in 1923, in the Makah village of Ozette located on the Pacific Northwest Coast in Washington state.  Pearl has lost her father, the best Makah harpooner, at sea. This means there is no whale meat for her village, no oil to trade and possibly a hungry winter ahead. Faced with an uncertain future, Pearl and her grandparents, and extended family consider their options. One of these options is to sell her father's Raven regalia, which angers and upsets Pearl. Another option, which her family comes to plan out, is to harvest and sell oysters. 

But as Parry shows, Pearl's struggle is not just to find a way to earn money for her family. It is also about saving  herself , preserving her way of life and the culture she belongs to. This sets up a fierce inner conflict within Pearl that she wrestles to resolve.  

After her family makes enough money to support themselves through the winter by selling oysters, they decide to visit the theatre. It is while in the theatre where she notices how they are shunned, that Pearl considers what living like the white man might  cost her. "I could do it if I wanted to. I could put on a white woman's clothes and high voice and little steps. But then I would never be able to sing or dance in my own language, never be able to bring a visitor or a token from home to the boardinghouse in town."

When Pearl struggles to teach herself how to weave she comes to realize that she may be losing all that is dear to her and that those who follow her may having nothing of their culture to learn and instead become part of the white man's world. "What if I couldn't remember my father's dances either? What if I could only see how beautiful they were and how easy he'd make it look to dance like Raven? What if my sons received the masks and never learned to dance?

I thought of the footprints of my descendants on the beach. Would those feet ever dance, or would they trudge after me to factories and lumber camps and cities far from home?"   The mention of footprints on the beach is foreshadowing the novel's framing story which is set years later in 1999 when Pearl is on the beach with her granddaughter Ruby.

Pearl already knows every song and dance of her tribe, every birth and marriage in the family and could recite all of her grandmother's stories. However, when she is stranded on the Seal Hunter's Beach she discovers a hidden carvings of Chitwin the bear and of a whale in the sea above two whaling boats facing a human face with closed eyes and open mouth. Pearl wonders why she has never known about these carvings and what they might mean. "Every other carving my family made - totem, mask, canoe - was a public work mean to proclaim the strength and prosperity of our name. Why would this stone carving be kept a secret from all but passing birds? Then she realizes that the whale hunt is made real by the teller, the whale hunter who tells what happened on the hunt. Pearl's father was that teller. She decides that now she will be the teller of the Makah stories.  The decision to become the storyteller offers her a resolution to her internal conflict, and leads her to immediately begin writing down what she has seen and all she knows about her tribe's stories.

Experiencing once more the beauty of her own culture and traditions reinforces what Pearl felt earlier about living as the white man does. "I imagined that life. Me, alone in the city, working as a washerwoman or living in one of those orphanages where they taught you to be a white person. How to stand and dress and pray, until the bread-loaf brown faded from my skin and the words of my childhood were erased like chalk marks. What a grub they would make of me, a pale, blind weevil that thinks of filling its belly and nothing more. I raised a fist against that path. Something worse than the Pitch Woman would be waiting for me at the end of that road." She now knows she doesn't need to go down this path. There is another - that of being the teller of her people's traditions, stories and families.

Pearl's story is one of courage, determination and integrity. She and the other Indigenous peoples of the Pacific coast struggle with deep distrust of the white man and outsiders whom they view as dishonoring the land. This is shown in the story of the whale hunt that her Uncle Jeremiah tells. He explains that they saw "...a battleship making war on the whales. The cannon held a harpoon. Dead whales were pumped full of air, chained up, and dragged along behind, only to be eaten away by sharks. Twenty whales were pouring out their blood, and still they steamed after more. The waste. The dishonor. We wanted to curse their white greed, but these sailors had faces like ours. They flew the red sun of Japan. Hours later, we passed more battleship whalers, one from America, one from Russia. We saw more dead whales in one day than this village has seen in three generations."  

This distrust is also portrayed by the events surrounding the visit by an "art dealer" seeking carved Totem poles and masks. When Arthur Glen shows up at the post office in Kalaloch looking to travel to Ozette, Pearl believes that he is after her father's Raven masks. However, with the help of Henry, Pearl learns that Glen is actually a wildcatter, looking for oil and gas resources under the pretext of being an art dealer and a photographer. Pearl knows well what will happen to them if Glen's discoveries are made known, because she knows the treaties they have signed are worthless when there is something the white man wants. "My friend Anita from Nitinat had cousins in Montana. They used to live in the Black Hills, but gold miners came and now they live in a rail-yard shack in Helena with strangers all around them and no clean water or view of the mountains. The schoolmaster called it assimilation. He called it admirable. I knew piracy when I saw it."

It is Susi who tells Pearl that despite what they have discovered about Mr. Glen, they cannot act with dishonor but instead should use her words to tell the truth - about the "art dealer". Her stories help save her culture. In the end, Pearl lives long enough to see the whale hunt resume and her own granddaughter learn the traditional weaving lost so long ago with the death of her own mother.

Rosanne Parry includes a map of the story's setting as well as an extensive Author's Note that covers many different topics mentioned in the novel including the potlatch, petroglyphs, Makah and Quinault rituals and stories and much more. There is a list of resources as well as a Glossary of the Quinault words used in the story. Parry spent some of her first years as a teacher on the Quinault Reservation in Washington state. She writes, "The resumption of whaling was a key inspiration for this story, and I am grateful to the Makah Nation for having kept their whaling history alive for all the generations it took  for the whales to recover from near extinction by industrial whaling."

Written In Stone is a captivating story that offers readers a strong female Indigenous main character and plenty of themes to explore including the intergenerational relationships within Indigenous culture, the exploitation of the Indigenous people of North American, racism, Pacific Coast Indigenous tribes and culture and its preservation and the relationship of man to the natural world. This well-written short novel will appeal especially to readers in Grades 6 to 8. Yet another thought-provoking novel by author Rosanne Parry.

Book Details:

Written In Stone by Rosanne Parry
New York: Yearling    2013
196 pp.

A Whale Of The Wild by Rosanne Parry

A Whale Of The Wild tells the story of a young orca who endures a catastrophic event to save what's left of her family.

Vega is part of the Warmward Kinship of Great Salmon Eaters that includes her Greatmother Siria,  her mother Arctura, her Uncle Rigel, her younger brother Deneb, and her cousin Aquila and Aquila's son Altair.  Mother is carrying Vega's sister, Capella, and will soon give birth. Her pod live in the Salish Sea where they depend on the salmon that migrate from the sea back to the mountain streams every year. Vega,  Mother and Greatmother have been unsuccessfully searching the islands and inlets of the Salish Sea for Chinook salmon. Vega is young and she doesn't yet have the skills to be a good hunter like Mother or a master wayfarer like Greatmother.

When Vega catches a salmon, Mother invites her to lead the family as a wayfarer to The Gathering Place, where their kin meet up to hunt the salmon. Disaster almost ensues when Vega attempts to lead them across an open passage where they encounter a large boat. The noise from the boat drowns out their click stream and disorients Deneb and the rest of the pod. They are led to safety by Greatmother who has them dive deep to avoid the boat's growler (engine propellers).

This mistake devastates Vega who recklessly heads off on her own when Greatmother takes over. Aquila follows Vega, leaving behind her son Altair. She scolds Vega, telling her she must try harder, and that their family needs her. Vega follows Aquila as she leads them back to the Gathering Place. On their journey there is an earthquake on the seafloor that scares the two orcas. Vega notes though, that above water everything seems the same. Finally they meet their family at the Gathering Place where they also hear the voices of other families as they make their way in from the ocean.

Deneb is thrilled that Vega has returned. That night he overhears Greatmother telling of a time long ago when the earth shakes and how the open ocean is a refuge but also a danger. Greatmother tells Vega that they will stay because they need to wait for the salmon but they also must listen too. Mother gives birth to Capella, but she is still born. In her anguish, Vega steals the dead baby to take it to a graveyard of orcas called Blood Cove. Uncle Rigel sends Deneb to search along the shore for Vega, but when he's unable to find her, he continues on. But as Vega is returning through Deception Pass, another violent earthquake hits. Separated from her family and now in great danger, how will Vega manage to survive and meet up with those in her family?

Discussion

A Whale of the Wild tells the story of a young orca or killer whale who becomes separated from her family during an devastating earthquake and the subsequent tsunami. 

The main character of the story is Vega, a young orca who is on the threshold of learning the skills that will make her a wayfarer for her family. Parry employs anthropomorphism, giving her animal characters many human traits and emotions. For example, Vega is kind, impulsive and inquisitive. She questions everything and wants to learn. "When I was a youngling, I thought Greatmother knew the sea down to its last drop. I thought she and Mother and all the greatmothers of my kinship were the ones to call salmon out of the ocean. But the more I learn, the more questions I have."

Vega's journey to the Gathering Place after the earthquake and tsunami is not only a physical one to be reunited with her family, but it is also a journey that sees her grow more mature and confident in her abilities. After a brief time in the deep ocean, Vega successfully leads her brother Deneb and Aquila and Altair back to safety and to the Gathering Place.

Parry incorporates many interesting facts about orcas and other cetaceans, about the ecosystem of the Salish Sea and how human use of the land and water has impacted that ecosystem and the orcas. Vega remembers the stories Greatmother told of what the sea was like before when she sees the longboats of the local Indigenous people.

"The old stories tell of a time when all the boats in the Salish Sea were as quiet as these. In those days, boats did not bleed poison. No one tried to capture orcas. And the salmon ran so thick and strong that not a single orca of any kinship ever knew hunger. There were so many fish that rivers shone silver in the summer sun."  Greatmother told of how the Indigenous peoples and the orcas "...had a settled way between us. They hunted salmon in the rivers and coves, and we hunted them in the sea."

A Whale of the Wild tells an interesting story from the point of view of the orcas. At times it's confusing to figure out who is narrating as the story switches from Vega to Deneb and back again. However, readers who are interested in whales, orcas and dolphins will enjoy this novel as well as the beautiful illustrations by Lindsay Moore. Parry includes a large section on information about the Salish Sea ecosystem as well as a detailed map. There is also a list of resources for further study.

Salish Sea map credit: https://www.canadiangeographic.ca/article/salish-sea-change

More information about the Southern Resident Killer Whales: https://www.salishseacentre.org/resources

Protecting the Core Habitat of the Southern Resident Killer Whales: https://tinyurl.com/4tb8z2kk

 Book Details:

A Whale Of The Wild by Rosanne Parry
Greenwillow Books        2020
322 pp.

A Wolf Called Wander by Rosanne Parry

A Wolf Called Wander tells the story of a young wolf who undertakes an incredible journey of survival after his pack is destroyed. The story is based on the real life events surrounding a wild wolf known as OR-7 who was named Journey.

The story opens with the birth of a wolf pup named Swift into a large wolf pack. Swift named because he was the first to stand and walk, has a brother named Sharp who is bigger and a brother named Warm who is smaller,  as well as sisters named Pounce and Wag.  Although Swift is eager to go into the world outside the den, he is warned not to do so by Mother. Eventually at night, Mother orders the young wolf pups out of the den and into the world.

In the world Swift meets other members of the pack, Song the hunger, pup-watcher Growl and Father who gives him a lump of predigested meat. Swift learns this is elk meat, the "life of the pack".

During the summer, the pack hunts and Swift and his brothers and sisters enjoy the elk meat. Despite his best efforts, Swift can never quite get his larger brother Sharp to drop his tail to him. Swift eats more and runs faster but Sharp is stronger and larger. But Swift sits with Father watching him watch the mountainside that is their home. Swift learns not to hunt skunks, eat mushrooms or white berries nor badgers, wolverines or porcupines. He learns about the ravens and how they work with the wolves, about how men kill wolves and works on his hunting skills.

As summer turns to fall, Father notes there are many more wolves in their area. So he and Mother go off to mark out their territory to warn the stranger-wolves away. During an elk hunt, Father teaches Swift how to run the elk to uncover the weakest one but it is Sharp who helps make the kill and who feeds after Father and Mother. This leaves Swift only more determined to beat his bigger brother. During the winter Father chooses Swift to run the herd while Sharp helps him make the kill. 

No longer a yearling, Swift watches as the season changes and Mother has another batch of pups. On the first full moon of summer while the pups are feeding, an enemy pack of silver wolves attack Swift's smaller pack. While Mother escapes up the mountain with the pups, Father is surrounded by the other wolves and attacked. When Swift sees another wolf attempting to follow Mother up the mountain, he gets the wolf's attention by pretending to be a weaker wolf and then leads him on a chase. This wolf dies during the chase, but Swift determined to save his pack, leads several more on chases. However, Swift hears his father's death cry. Although he wants to howl to his pack to learn if any survived he can't because this might reveal them to the attacking pack. Later that night the pale wolves howl. Swift hears Sharp's low howl and knows that he is now their following wolf and that none of his pack remain. So Swift begins a journey that will take him hundreds of miles from his home territory and a new chance at life. Along the way there will be many lessons to learn, new animals to discover and many skills to develop.

Discussion

Remote camera photo of OR7 taken in 2014

A Wolf Called Wander is loosely based on the life of a gray wolf who was collared in Oregon. He was the seventh wolf collared and was named OR-7. OR-7 was born into the Imnaha Pack in Oregon in 2009. He was collared in February of 2011.  In September 2011 OR-7 left the Imnaha Pack, travelling four thousand miles through the state of Oregon and eventually crossing into California. He travelled through the Soda Mountain Wilderness, the Klamath Basin and Sky Lakes Wilderness. His presence in California made him the first wolf in that state since 1924. OR7 returned to Oregon, crossing back and forth between the state and California several times before finding a mate and establishing a new pack, called the Rogue pack based in the Rogue-Siskiyou National Forest in 2014. Since that time, OR7 has produced five sets of pups, helping to establish more wolves in Oregon.

Swift's story is told from his point of view, in a decidedly "wolf" voice. This makes the narrative that much more interesting and the lovely pencil illustrations by Monica Armino are a refreshing throwback to classic juvenile fiction novels from the 1950's and 1960's. They enhance Swift's story in a very real way.

Ultimately, Swift's story is one of brute survival, as he travels through new landscapes and must deal with a serious wound, lack of food, water and the loneliness of life without a pack. Early on the reader sees Swift's incredible will to survive after he is injured attempting to take down an elk. Unable to to walk and with vulture flying overhead, Swift determination to live is strong. "All creatures eat and all are eaten in the end, but I am not ready to be eaten, not today. I want my pack, my own pack. I want to run, to hunt, to live."

Parry incorporates many interesting facts about wolves into her story. For example, when Swift first leaves his decimated pack he has help from a raven. Ravens and wolves can have a symbiotic relationship, with the raven helping a wolf find food. But Swift, a young wolf without much experience doesn't understand why the raven has been following him. Father knew how to talk to the ravens, but he does not. However, when the raven picks up a bone and continues to drop it in front of Swift he comes to understand that the raven knows how to find food, but needs help from Swift. "Ravens do things for a reason. She is talking to me. She must know where to find meat. For all their savvy, ravens have the wrong beak for opening a hide. They need someone with teeth to get at the meat."

A Wolf Called Wander is an engaging novel that draws readers into the natural world, teaching them about wolves,  and helping them to understand the importance of an apex predator like the wolf in the forest ecosystem.  It also offers young readers the opportunity to consider the impact of man wolves over the last century. This well written novel will appeal to animal lovers of all ages. It's a book with a refreshingly different theme from the many the fantasy novels written for younger readers.

Parry has included a section titled, "The Real Wolf Behind The Story" which tells about OR7 and includes photographs and a map of OR7's journey through Oregon, into California and back into Oregon. There is also a section titled "About Wolves" which provides readers with information about some of their special characteristics as well as wolf tracks, wolf packs, wolf behaviour, the various habitats that Swift and his real-life counterpart,  OR7 encountered on their journeys. Parry has also listed Resources for Young Readers which offers documentaries, books and websites to check out, as well as some General Resources.

OR7 image credit: Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife  https://www.flickr.com/photos/odfw/16674012963/in/album-72157623481759903/


Book Details:

A Wolf Called Wander by Rosanne Parry
New York: Greenwillow Books    2019
243 pp.