WILD

🇬🇧 Description:

In this beautiful picture book by Emily Hughes, we meet a little girl who has known nothing but nature from birth-she was taught to talk by birds, to eat by bears, and to play by foxes. She is unashamedly, irrefutably, irrepressibly wild. That is, until she is snared by some very strange animals that look oddly like her, but they don't talk right, eat right, or play correctly. She's puzzled by their behavior and their insistence on living in these strange concrete structures: there's no green here, no animals, no trees, no rivers. Now she lives in the comfort of civilization. But will civilization get comfortable with her?

In her debut picture book, Hughes brings an uncanny humor to her painterly illustrations. Her work is awash with color, atmosphere, and a stunning visual splendor that will enchant children while indulging their wilder tendencies. Wild is a twenty-first-century answer to Maurice Sendak's children's classic-it has the same inventiveness, groundbreaking art, and unmissable quirkiness.

Reviews:

"Wild by Emily Hughes relies on its lush, almost rough art to convey a story about belonging and being different. When a little girl raised in the woods it taken into 'civilized' society, mayhem and torn upholstery follow in her wake."
—The Horn Book

"[...] the imagery is beautifully intricate and full of subtle details, it's a pretty straight-forward story that anyone can follow [...] It’s a great reminder for us not to take ourselves too seriously and give the wild animals in us a little room to breathe."

—The New York Public Library

"This is a gorgeously illustrated and elegantly narrated picture book about a wild little girl who is raised by animals and then brought back to civilization. It’s an engaging picture book for adults to read with children. Wild reminds me what childhood can feel like for a child."
— The Picture Book Review