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32 pp.
| Groundwood
| March, 2021
|
Trade
ISBN 978-1-77306-501-4
$18.95
(
2)
K-3
Translated by
Shelley Tanaka.
Illustrated by
Nathalie Dion.
"He didn't need to huff or puff or blow the house down...The big bad wolf just walked in the door." With this chilling opening, a young girl describes the abuse she and her mother suffer at the hands of her mother's new partner. Pictured as a fairy-tale "big bad wolf" who stands on two feet and casts a menacing shadow, the abuser berates the mother when she is late, leaves bruises on the narrator's arm that she must hide with long sleeves, and enters the child's bedroom without her permission. "He paid no attention to a barrier made of wood." So the girl "built a fort made of bricks. I put it up around my heart," and she protects herself thus until the day she and her mother escape to a shelter for abused women and children. There, "the big bad wolf can huff and puff all he wants. This house will not fall down." The familiar folkloric language and motifs work brilliantly to describe a terrifying, but ultimately hopeful, story of domestic violence. The illustrations effectively convey a child's point of view. The wolf, for example, takes up more visual space than either the child or her mother. When the wolf is "spitting mad" and yelling at the child's mother, his large dark shape curves and looms over her, blocking any escape. Still, as difficult as the content is, a gentle palette of cream and yellow, with accents of red, gives the reader some respite and foreshadows the hopeful ending. A skillfully crafted, emotionally honest treatment of a very challenging subject.