The Wolves of Currumpaw

by William Grill

Overview

The Wolves of Currumpaw is a beautifully illustrated modern re-telling of Ernest Thompson Seton's epic wilderness drama Lobo, the King of Currumpaw, originally published in 1898. Set in the dying days of the old west, Seton's drama unfolds in the vast planes of New Mexico, at a time when man's relationship with nature was often marked by exploitations and misunderstanding. This is the first graphic adaptation of a massively influential piece of writing by one of the men who went on to form the Boy Scouts of America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781909263833
Publisher:	Flying Eye Books Ltd.
Publication date:	07/12/2016
Pages:	80
Product dimensions:	9.80(w) x 12.10(h) x 0.60(d)
Lexile:	980L (what's this?)
Age Range:	7 - 14 Years

About the Author

William Grill recently graduated from University College Falmouth and currently works in London as a freelance illustrator. He works in predominately in colored pencil, and has worked for a variety of clients such as Harrods, The New York Times, Shelter and NOBROW. William draws most of his inspiration from looking closely at what's around him, and from a young age has maintained a keen interest in dogs and the outdoors.

Table of Contents

Page 3. "The Old West"
Page 9. "The King of Currumpaw"
Page 21. "The Wolf Hunter"
Page 37. "Blanca"
Page 51. "Capture"
Page 67. "A Changed Man"

Editorial Reviews

…a beautifully designed oversize picture book…Grill's spare text is harrowing enough, but it's even more emotionally elevated by his colored pencil drawings…Hauntingly beautiful full-spread landscapes are scattered throughout, some from Lobo's point of view and some from Seton's, supplemented by images of widely varying sizes that further the story line…By forgoing Seton's first-person perspective for the more distant third-person voice and tightening the account, Grill has created a powerful picture book that is certain to provoke feelings of empathy for the regal Lobo and Blanca, though one perhaps best appreciated by animal-loving younger readers with an adult nearby.

The New York Times Book Review - Monica Edinger

★ 06/13/2016
Greenaway Medal–winner Grill (Shackleton's Journey) leaves the Antarctic for the New Mexico desert of the 1890s in a haunting retelling of Ernest Thompson Seton's short story his attempt to capture Lobo, "a giant among wolves," whose pack had been terrorizing settlers in the Currumpaw valley for years. After many skilled hunters failed to kill the gray wolf, Seton arrived from New York City to try his hand, discovering more about Lobo than the previous men, including that the wolves were killing the ranchers' cattle out of necessity. He eventually secured Lobo after capturing and killing his mate, Blanca, an act that, along with Lobo's subsequent death, led Seton to devote "the rest of his life to protecting the wolf species." Alternating among small vignettes, sequential panels, and sweeping spreads of desert vistas and expansive skies, Grill's rough-hewn pencil artwork amplifies Seton's internal turmoil and the grim skirmishes between man and wolf through a limited palette of rust red, drab blue, taupe, and charcoal. It's a powerful, cinematic work of naturalistic fiction that deftly outlines the importance of respecting nature. Ages 7–14. (July)

Publishers Weekly

A JUNIOR LIBRARY GUILD SELECTION
ONE OF The Guardian'S BEST CHILDREN'S BOOKS OF 2016
ONE OF THE IRISH TIMES' BEST PICTURE BOOKS OF 2016
ONE OF Paste Magazine'S BEST KIDS COMICS OF 2016
ONE OF BookTrusts “100 BEST BOOKS FROM THE LAST 100 YEARS” 

A powerful, cinematic work of naturalistic fiction that deftly outlines the importance of respecting nature.
—Publisher’s Weekly, STARRED REVIEW

Grill has created a powerful picture book that is certain to provoke feelings of empathy for the regal Lobo and Blanca.
—The New York Times

Breathtaking illustrated pages [...] Mr. Grill uses colored pencils and perspective pulled well back—to reveal men and animals as vanishingly small when set against the beautiful vastness of the natural world.
—The Wall Street Journal

A magnificent large-scale picture book, The Wolves of Currumpaw gives narrative non-fiction a new dimension. […] The story is deeply moving, and Grill ends by linking Seton’s tale to the history of conservation of wildlife and its great importance today.
—The Guardian, The Best Children's Books of 2016

William Grill brilliantly evokes a landscape inhabited by wolves in his narrative non-fiction The Wolves of Currumpaw.
—The Irish Times, The Best Picture Books of 2016

An artful, thought-provoking adaptation sure to inspire budding conservationists.
—Booklist

The winner of the 2015 Kate Greenaway Medal offers an atmospheric retelling of a 19th-century tale that helped to spark the wildlife conservation movement in this country. […] the illustrations convey an intensity of feeling in keeping with the profound way the experience changed at least one man’s life.
—Kirkus Reviews

a story both disquieting and redemptive, emblematic of the era’s problematic relationship with the natural world and central to the evolution of the wildlife conservation movement over the century that followed it. […] an essential reminder that we can’t reasonably judge one era by the moral standards of another; that, above all, so many of our ethical principles have emerged from the disquietude of their opposite — a sentiment echoed in the contrast between Grill’s soft, sensitive illustrations and the brutality of the killings, both by the wolves and of the wolves.
—Brain Pickings

Based on Seton’s book, Wild Animals I Have Known, this children’s storybook is educational and appealing for young ones and the adults who will enjoy reading it with them. […] The Wolves of Currumpaw will surely charm readers as Lobo charmed Seton.
—Historical Novel Society

Beautifully illustrated […] Grill’s stunning colored pencil drawings enhance and extend his modern retelling of Seton’s drama, Lobo, the King of Currumpaw, originally published in 1898.
—OmniLibros

Like William Grill’s other picture book, Shackleton’s Journey, Wolves is beautifully illustrated on thick textured paper with colored pencils. Wolves [...] is powerful, told as much by Grill’s narrative as it is by his illustrations. [...] I look forward to seeing what he brings us next.
—Wink

In his follow-up to the beautiful Shackleton's Journey, William Grill and his colored pencils tackle the story of Lobo king wolf of the Currumpaw valley and the men who tried to hunt him in the 1880's. The text is compassionate yet honest about the events, telling the reader what happened and why it was harmful. But, being William Grill, it's the dream-like art that shines in his burning red brown deserts and sweeping blue skies. It might have felt like an age since a new project by Grill (though it's only been two years) but Wolves is worth every moment of that wait.
—Amy Brabenec, Brookline Booksmith

This is a lovely book which is sure to win many hearts.
—Nicola Mansfield, Back To Books

What makes this book brilliant – a bar-smasher – is the way Grill has blended and merged different genres to create something that is uniquely his own. Fact and fiction, word and picture become one. It’s a book full of wisdom – it is beyond categorisation and beyond compare.
—A Bookish Life

This is a lovely book which is sure to win many hearts.
—It's All Comic To Me

From the Publisher

2016-06-01
The winner of the 2015 Kate Greenaway Medal offers an atmospheric retelling of a 19th-century tale that helped to spark the wildlife conservation movement in this country.Recast in simpler, less melodramatic prose from Ernest Thompson Seton's 1898 reminiscence of a wolf hunt in New Mexico, the narrative pits Seton, an experienced hunter, against Old Lobo—a huge and canny pack leader with a legendary ability to detect human-laid poison and traps. Using colored pencils on rough, oversized pages for impressionistic effects, Grill intersperses scenes of broad cityscapes or distant wolves loping sinuously across wide-open desert landscapes with arrays of unbordered vignettes. His depiction of generic Native Americans clad uniformly in fringed buckskins and feathered headdresses in a sequence depicting the advance of white settlers is, to say the least, simplistic, but even in miniature the wolves throughout radiate a compellingly feral nobility. The end comes at last when, following the trapping of Old Lobo's mate, he himself is captured and dies after a night in captivity. The original story stops there; here it carries on to note that the encounter led Seton to become an advocate for wilderness and wildlife, followed by others who have worked to preserve gray wolf populations. The stereotyping is a definite gaffe, but the illustrations convey an intensity of feeling in keeping with the profound way the experience changed at least one man's life. (resource lists) (Picture book. 8-10)

Kirkus Reviews