-Selected as one of the 1998 Best Children's Books of the Year by Bank Street College of Education
- An American Bookseller's "Pick of the Lists"
Published by: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Written by: Kay Winters Illustrated by: Laura Regan
$16.00 US - $21.50 CAN Ages - 4 - 8
On a velvet night,
While the moon is rising
Seven wolves watch"
"For those budding young naturalists who relish information on wild animals, here is a treasure of a book. In short, carefully worded, poetic quatrains, Winters accurately
follows four wolf pups from the night of their birth through their first venture out. She also presents the enemy - a golden eagle - that, sensing the birth, waits for a chance to prey upon one of the defenseless pups. Regan's realistic oil paintings perfectly capture the animals' actions and bring their world to life. Scenes of mother wolf and her pups in the birth
cave on left-handed pages face glimpses of the outside environment. When the young ones leave the cave, the illustrator switches to double- page spreads, allowing the sequence of the eagle's attack to play itself out dramatically. Several portraits of the mother and her babies and one of the eagle are exquisitely detailed. The blending of myriad shades of brown and gray results in a sense of depth, of wide expanse, of textured fur and rock-strewn hills. There is a lot of information to be gleaned from this sparely written visual masterpiece.
Susan Scheps, Shaker Heights Public Library, OH