Billie B. Little

In Valerie Hobbs' new novel, Wolf, Jack the border collie has landed in the perfect place. Loved by his teenage boy, Luke, he’s the top dog and responsible for safeguarding a small flock of sheep on the family farm. Jack has only one nagging concern. He’s growing old.

Soon, an unwanted visitor changes everything. A lone wolf, banished from his pack, lurks in the woods near Jack’s farm, and his constant, harrowing presence—stalking the sheep and hoping to mate with Jack’s granddaughter, Callie—gives a frightening edge to the book that compels the reader’s rapt attention.

This dramatic sequel to Hobbs’ popular novel, Sheep, alternates between Jack’s and the wolf’s points of view. In an unsettling voice, the wolf counts his journey in moons and his narrow gaze sees the world as rock-strewn hills, grassy slopes and woods for hunting. His reactions are visceral, his life an ongoing battle for survival. He is acutely lonely, “a feeling so unfamiliar that at first he confused it with hunger.” He’s drawn to the family farm by the slow-moving sheep that look like easy prey—far easier targets than the rodent that bit him, causing a wound that will not heal. Wolf’s austere existence is contrasted with Jack’s loving family and the day-to-day concerns of Luke and his friends.

Jack isn’t as quick as he used to be, and Wolf could have become another tired story of an aging dog’s quest for a blue ribbon at the state fair. But Hobbs foreshadows the drama to come with restraint, saying of Jack, “He would rather die than disappoint Luke.” As the fast-moving plot progresses, the tension is tightened like a string, with each incident, each phrase, increasing it slightly.

The contrast in tone between the two animals and the transparency of each canine’s thoughts and desires is gripping. Raised by humans, loving Jack wins our hearts, but it is the wolf, wild and terrifying, who ultimately wins our respect and our pity.

Carly Bean Bitters has a serious problem. Pale and small for her age, the 11-year-old can’t sleep at night, finding rest only during the day. Leading a lonely life, she sits up in an old chair in the attic of her aunt’s house, orphaned and friendless, waiting for the sun to rise so she can sleep. Young readers will empathize with Carly as she longs for a life beyond the attic but would settle for a friend. The moon is her only companion until she meets Lewis, a fiddling rat, who appears on her roof and asks her to join his little band.

Lewis explains that the number of rat musicians is dwindling. The owls, no longer distracted by the rats’ music, have started hunting them. Soon an owl swoops in, grabbing Carly from her rooftop and dropping her in the Whistle Root woods, and the adventure begins. When Carly meets Breeza Meezy, Queen of the rats, and visits their wondrous village, she learns the rats are in trouble and need her help. Carly finds a cryptic note warning “the Moon Child is in danger,” and begins to wonder if the Moon Child is, in fact, her. More questions than answers arise when Carly is befriended by Green, a classmate who hides out beneath the library. Together they search the stories of Whistle Root for clues.

First-time author Christopher Pennell blends the natural world seamlessly with fantasy in this lively debut novel. Young readers will cheer as Carly struggles to untangle an elaborate mystery, outwit a flesh-eating Griddlebeast and take her proper place in the woods.

The Mysterious Woods of Whistle Root successfully bounces between run-ins at school, where Carly is teased and taunted for sleeping all day, and fantastical moments when she flies high above the woods as Lewis has taught her. Rebecca Bond’s whimsical pen-and-ink drawings make the book especially engaging to read aloud to younger children and ensures a captivating experience for middle graders. When the mystery comes to a satisfying resolution, readers will want to linger a little longer in Whistle Root.