Ahwoooooooo! - Hardcover

Murphy, Yannick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0618117628 ISBN 13: 9780618117628

Publisher: Clarion Books, 2006

Synopsis

One moonlit night, Little Wolf wakes and knows he is ready. This is the night he will learn how to howl. But who can teach him? Mother and Father Wolf are too busy, and none of the other animals know how. There is someone, though, who has been howling for many years. He is old and gray. He is wise and patient. And he has a grandson who wants very much to learn how to howl.

Grandfather’s encouraging words and Little Wolf ’s strong, sonorous first howl are sure to inspire readers to discover the howl within themselves.

About this title

About the Author:

Yannick Murphy has received a Whiting Writer's Award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a MacDowell Artists' Colony Fellowship, a Sewanee Writers' Conference fellowship, and a Chesterfield Writing Program Fellowship. Her first children's book was Ahwoooooooo! (Clarion, spring 2006) and she is also the author of the highly-praised adult novels Here They Come (McSweeney's), The Sea of Trees (Houghton), and Signed, Mata Hari (Little, Brown). She lives in Reading, Vermont, with her husband and three children. You can read more about her at www.yannickmurphy.com.

From Booklist:

PreS-Gr. 2. Themes of intergenerational bonding and childhood milestones lend substance to this agreeable picture book, but most alluring may be the onomatopoeic title and its noisy reprises within. Little Wolf (not to be confused with Tony Ross' early-chapter-book character) wants to learn to howl, but his parents are too busy to teach him. After frustrating tutorials in croaking, hooting, and birdsong from woodland creatures, Little Wolf's gentle, wise grandfather helps him to produce an "enormous" howl that impresses the whole pack. Although the somewhat meandering story line may challenge shorter attention spans, many children will be drawn by Munoz's soft-focus watercolors, in which gently anthropomorphized animals (notwithstanding stylized features, these wolves go unclothed and gnaw bones at suppertime) wander a moonlit wilderness rimmed with mountains, where a rock formation echoing Little Wolf's baying silhouette gives sharp-eyed youngsters something extra to notice. Nocturnal setting aside, this won't work as a bedtime book: Little ones will inevitably want to follow Little Wolf's lead and "find the howl inside [themselves]." Jennifer Mattson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Clarion Books
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0618117628
• ISBN 13: 9780618117628
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Munoz Claudio