26. Woolvs in The Sitee

Woolvs in the Sitee by Margaret Wild and Anne Spudvilas (Front Street) 2007

Genre

Picturebook

Honors

Children's Book Council of Australia Children's Book of the Year Award, 2007, nominee

Review

The narrative is a bit amorphous.  An uneducated child named Ben spends his time hiding from an unnamed menace that he calls "woolvs."  The story features this kind of fractured spelling throughout to characterize Ben as a child who doesn't go to school.  We know something is wrong with the world: The sky is always black and the weather never changes. He frequently visits his neighbor Mrs. Radinski.  One day someone paints a wall near Ben's window blue and he thinks the sky has returned to normal.  It turns out to be a snare and he is saved by Mrs. Radinski.  But soon she too disappears.  And Ben goes off in search of her.

Opinion

The text and pictures work together to create a dark world that is difficult to place in time (though the child's accent and the authors' biographies suggest that it takes place in Australia).  By not naming the menace, the authors open up a world of possibilities: the book could be mapped onto a variety of problems.  The closing page and call to action loses nothing from this dilution -- instead the message seems to be one of personal empowerment, a question of what it will take for you to act.

Examples of the dark, expressionistic artwork throughout the book.

Ideas

The book's ambiguity could mean that it maps well onto any current wartime scenario wherein populations are systematically uprooted, killed, or interned.  It might be an appropriate way to start a lesson about any of those kinds of historical or current events.  It also lends itself to inspiration for story telling.  It feels as though we have the first chapter of a novel, not a complete work.  The book could be used as great fodder for a writing group. Each member could write their own next phase, or a group could work collaboratively to tell the adventure.