Margaret Wild, illustrated by Anne Spudvilas,
Woolvs in the Sitee
Viking Penguin, 2006.

Ages 12+

The talented team of Margaret Wild and Anne Spudvilas has produced a remarkable picture book that beautifully balances those ubiquitous reviewers’ words, “compelling” and “challenging.” Woolvs in the Sitee, 2007 winner of the Aurealis Award and a CBC Honour Book, is so original and unusual that the publishers have posted a special teaching guide on the book’s website page. But don’t be deterred by classification-slipping noises; Woolvs offers rich rewards for the visually and metaphorically literate young reader.

 Wild’s wild spelling is the first clue that something’s amiss in the world of the first-person narrator, Ben, and from the dramatic red and black cover onwards, Spudvilas’ charcoal and colored ink artwork invigorates and propels the story forward in a kind of counterpoint to the text. The colors, calligraphy and dramatic perspectives, along with brilliantly distinctive spelling and inventive vocabulary, suggest that Wild and Spudvilas could hold their own in any midnight graffiti crew. It’s not clear what exactly is wrong in Ben’s dystopian world; readers can project holocaust or schizophrenia equally well, but whatever the source, Ben is paralyzed by fear, huddled in a basement room, his only contact with the outside world a neighbor who checks in periodically. “Missus Radinski’s veree kind, but she won’t lissen abowt the woolvs... She thinks I’m torking abouwt those luvlee wyld creechis…”

 Missus Radinski rescues a terrified Ben when, excited by a newly-painted blue wall glimpsed from his room, he once ventures outside, expecting sunshine and safety. Later, she doesn’t appear for three days, doesn’t even answer Ben’s knocks at her door, and he finds the courage to go looking for her. “My hart is jakhammering, but I will no longer let the woolvs forse me to scrootch. I will no longer let them stop me from making the streets my rivers and the parks my vallees.” Ben looks up at readers, Spudvilas’ rough brushstrokes capturing his vulnerability and resolve as he departs, and invites us, “Joyn me.”

 Only for well-established writers and illustrators like Wild and Spudvilas do publishers risk such nervy work. For the emerging adolescent who is realizing that life is not just what it appears to be, Woolvs in the Sitee will be embraced as a book that respectfully articulates the dark passages in one boy’s journey of emerging selfhood.

Charlotte Richardson
March 2008