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INTERMEDIATE FICTION
Parry, Rosanne

A Wolf Called Fire

256 pp. | Greenwillow | February, 2025 | Trade ISBN 9780063415133 $18.99 | Ebook ISBN 9780063415164 $9.99
(2) 4-6 Voice of the Wilderness series. Illustrated by Mónica Armiño. This companion volume to A Wolf Called Wander gives Warm, the beloved wolf brother of Swift, his own voice and tale. Warm is small and gentle, a watcher by nature and an unlikely hero for a survival story, but, as his wise mother maintains, "Big is not the only good thing for a wolf to be." In the opening chapters we follow Warm in his first year, and Parry sticks closely to realistic wolf behavior and biology, creating a plain and rhythmical language that balances the familiar and the strange. Warm says of his siblings in the den, "I know them all by sound and smell and their lifebeats are always near me." When the family is attacked by a hostile wolf pack and Warm must learn to rely on his own resources, the tone of the narrative changes, becoming more fablelike, a story in which our own human dilemmas are all too familiar. Warm's pack has all the usual family squabbles, but they survive by cooperation. The hostile pack is strictly hierarchical, with pack leaders maintaining their positions through intimidation and cruelty. A suspenseful, dramatic plot spins above the big grounding question of how we can survive and live with one another with respect and consideration. Dynamic illustrations along with extensive back matter (including essays on wolf biology, animal tracks, forest ecology, and youth climate activism) make for an appealing presentation.
Reviewer: Sarah Ellis | Horn Book Magazine Issue: March, 2025

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