Wolf Road: The Times Children's Book of the Week

Product Information

I thought the story was particularly brilliant at understanding child abuse and trauma, and post traumatic stress. Nimbly navigating a fine thread between real-world tragedy and elemental inner demons, Richard Lambert’s The Wolf Road is a stunning coming-of-age thriller about a boy’s battle with bereavement, and the wolf that holds the key to his healing. It’s un-put-down-able and emotionally haunting in perfectly balanced measures.

It’s been like 36 hours since I have either been told how stupid I am or personally confirmed said stupidity, so let me take a second to remind all of you. Between the title and the cover and the amount of time it took me to actually read The Wolf Road my pitiful little brain had decided it was going to be a story kinda like this one . . . .

Richard Lambert Press Reviews

I do love post apocalyptic stories, orphan stories, survival stories, and coming of age stories, and so this book was definitely my cup of tea. A second sold-out release show accompanied the band's acoustic and re-imagined record "Counterpoint." Word of Wolf Rd's dynamic live performances and engaging onstage antics began to spread like wildfire, spawning opportunities to tour across America and support internationally acclaimed artists like Meet Me @ The Altar (Fueled By Ramen), Tiny Moving Parts (Hopeless Records, Triple Crown Records) and Action/Adventure (Pure Noise Records). What I most disliked about the storytelling was its excessive foreshadowing. The main character narrator continually talked about what was going to happen, but not in a forthcoming way. I didn’t need being told in a cryptic way that some things (likely bad) were going to happen, and I didn’t like that way of moving along the story, yet somehow I enjoyed it anyway. But truthfully, the constant foreshadowing about drove me nuts. I was fine with the book starting with a scene near the end, but when I got to the scene introduced at the start of the book I didn’t think the reader needed such a long passage of identical words. The story and its characters were so compelling though that I forgave all of this, but I think the book would have been better without most of it. These are a seriously BIG questions. They have filled academic tomes (not so much fun) and animated films (much more fun but a bit light on the facts and to be honest rather sloth focussed).

it’s a gritty and funny and strong debut, and i would really like to read her second book, Bitter Sun, although it looks like it hasn't been published in the US yet, so i guess i can put it off for now AND THIS IS HOW THE SLIPPERY SLOPES HAPPEN! Elka is illiterate, and she often uses weren't instead of wasn't, uses a' instead of of, and abbreviations such as 'bout, 'neath, 'stead, 'hind, 'tween, and afore. At times while reading, I thought I might have caught some discrepancies, where she used the correct word rather than the one she used in its place most of the time, or the full word where she would normally use the abbreviation. This might have been done in an effort to make the text more readable, or it might have been an error in the translation of text into illiterate speak, but either way I was too caught up in the story to mark out the possible discrepancies, and this is why it gets 10/10. But I weren't no quitter No wolf nor bear just gives up when they get beat or hungry. You ever seen a bear jump off a cliff 'cause life handed him a few rough draws? No, you haven't. The wild keeps going till it don't have strength in its muscles and bones. The wild doesn't give up; it's forever, and so was I.”

About Richard Lambert

I don't much like roads. Roads is some other man's path that people follow no question. All my life I lived by rules of the forest and rules of myself. One a' them rules is don't go trusting another man's path." pg 85 The title of the book speaks to Elka's disdain for taking the regular road through the wilderness — in her world, that's where the predators find you. It's also a metaphor for living the life you want to live, not the one that others expect for you. The author did one thing I REALLY liked. I read a ton of stories set in this time period, and usually it's the modern people who have blond hair, blue eyes, and pale skin. In this one, the modern people had brown hair, brown eyes, and darker skin. The Neanderthal boy (Ander) was blond, blue eyed, and pale skinned. Twelve year old Tuuli is a member of a talo, a small tribe of connected families. She lives with her parents, ten year old brother and her cousins, aunts and their partners. Their talo are reindeer people, “sustained by the reindeer, connected with the reindeer”. Written in first-person narrative style, The Wolf Road is a dystopian coming-of-age story with some elements of horror and mystery. I found the opening to be a bit slow, but was swept up in the plot as the story progressed and Elka remembered certain details she had forgotten from her unique childhood.

Bestselling author Alexandra Christo, author of TikTok sensation To Kill a Kingdom, introduces her new book, The Night Hunt (Hot Key Books), a dark... I would highly recommend this book to others. It is a story that was often violent and gory but could also be thoughtful at times. I am amazed that this is the author's debut novel and I look forward to reading more of Beth Lewis's writing in the future. Deep in the woods of what was once called British Columbia, 17-year-old Elka is struggling to survive on her own. After what she refers to as the “Big Damn Stupid”, the two wars that demolished the world that we know, this post-apocalyptic wasteland isn’t for the weak-willed. When she was only 7-years-old, Elka was caught in a massive storm and lost her grandmother but was taken in by a man she called “Trapper”, a man that taught her everything she needed to know about surviving and became the closest thing she could call family. When Elka discovers that “Trapper” a.k.a Kreager Hallet is wanted by the law for the deaths of many, she disappears thinking that she must be next. Her plan is to finally set off to find her long lost parents who left her with her grandmother to go in search of wealth, but her days traversing the woods alone get her mind racing as to the reasons why Kreager Hallet kept her alive all these years. The author has spent her whole career (decades of time) researching this period of human history, and that really showed in this book. She's worked on TV science shows about it, has written many nonfiction books about it, and does talks about it. I hope she writes more fiction books based on it, because her love and knowledge of it shines through. The topography of British Columbia has changed. Wars have created a post-apocalyptic wilderness demanding a new set of survival skills.

LoveReading4Kids Says

Elka is orphaned when she is seven years old and taken in by a reclusive man living in the woods. She affectionately calls him Trapper and he teaches her how to survive in the wild. A decade later she visits a nearby town and finds a wanted poster featuring Trapper's distinctive tattooed face. Her entire worldview is shattered; the man she'd built up in her head "as some kind a’ god" unforgivable crimes. She may be his next target now that she knows the truth. She goes on the run in hopes of finding the parents who abandoned her to mine for gold in the far north town of Halveston. But the more distance she gets from Trapper, the more she starts remembering the events of their life together. She starts seeing these moments in a different light and wonders if she shares some of the blame for his crimes. What follows is a tale of revenge and second chances, as Elka faces the brutal, unpredictable conditions of the wild and the even more dangerous threats from the "civilized" world. The usual suspects get the credit blame for me reading this one. It doesn’t take much more than that. The plot is quite simple and the telling of the tale is clear and concise. But this is not at the expense of scientific detail. Professor Roberts is an expert in the field of human evolution and all the details or our young hero's life fit what we currently know about the lives of early hunter gatherers. The science is lightly worn but it is state of the art: taken from the latest archeological finds, recent genetic discoveries (see her book Tamed) as well as insights from the lives of surviving hunter gatherers. One a’ them rules is don’t go trusting another man’s path…People do it, they do what their mommies and daddies did, they make them same mistakes, they have them same joys and hurts, they just repeating. Trees don’t grow exactly where their momma is; ain’t no room…I weren’t following no one up through life.’

I thought that the three main female characters were particularly interesting, particularly the two younger ones.Tuuli is a prehistoric girl, travelling with her tribe through the seasons – making camp, hunting for food and protecting themselves against the many hazards that the climate throws at them. The second thing was the naming scheme. The tribe members all had animal names, but based mostly on the Finnish language name for the animal (the author used a couple languages as stand-ins for the ancient one). Even by the end of the book I didn't have a handle on who most of the characters were because the names were just a seemingly random collection of letters. Dapo Adeola, Tracy Darnton, Joseph Coelho and Chitra Soundar are among the 19 authors and illustrators longlisted for the Inclusive Books for Child... Elka had some trouble when she got to a town and boarded a boat that a NICE man helped her with...yeah. Some more bad things happen but she also met Penelope whom she became close friends with and they helped each other. Penelope could read and had smarts about her and she helped Elka find her folks but it wasn't the great family reunion she was hoping for. I seen women take this kind a’ help from a man with a look a’ relief on their faces. I wondered if these women knew how much easier their lives would be if they did all this stuff for themselves.’