Yet another take on the story of Lobo, King of the Currumpaw, an enormous and troublesome wolf back in the past. This time aimed at younger children. I'm not going to put a spoiler warning here since this is a non-fiction and everyone and their grandma already knows the ending to Lobo's tale by now, with it being over a hundred years old. But just know that it has a sad historically-accurate ending.
If you really want to know the original tale of Lobo before going into this book or review, read it in the book Wild Animals I Have Known by Ernest Thompson Seton, who himself was a major player in the story. It's literally the original version of the tale and also public domain, so you can find it for free online.
The Wolves of Currumpaw tells the tale of Lobo, a large wolf who, alongside his pack, kept thwarting local farmers by killing their livestock. Evading any and all traps and poisoned meats in order to kill him, he proves to be a master at escaping. Finally, a hunter named Seton manages to get to Lobo by killing his beloved mate, Blanca. Lobo is trapped not much later and held captive by Seton, being chained up. However the old wolf soon dies, seemingly of a broken heart and spirit.
This book is basically an illustrated and more-child friendly version of the tale, however not to the point it becomes fictional. It's clearly based on Seton's original telling of the story. I've actually reviewed that book, as well as another fictionalized version of the story on this blog before. The tale is thrilling but of course also sad, and Seton later ended up regretting killing Blanca and thus indirectly Lobo.
This book is definitely a very brief and sanitized version of the story (all the cruel details of in what state the killed livestock was found and how Blanca was brutally killed are omitted) but that's for the best considering the target audience. It's not like they dance around the fact that the animals died, either, it's just not shown in detail like in other tellings.
The illustrations have a very simplistic and somewhat messy and juvenile feel to them, but they still look interesting. There's also a lot of small ones rather than less bigger and detailed ones. Even if children can't read the text here, it's almost as if they can tell Lobo's tale based on the pictures alone in a graphic novel-esque way. It's not a comic, but there's so many illustrations showing what's going on it's still easy to tell based on the images alone.
While this telling of the story is very short and sanitized, I'm glad that this book still tells the story of Lobo truthfully and doesn't demonize neither Seton nor Lobo and his pack. It's just a neat retelling for younger children who love wolves, though it does have a sad ending, of course. Maybe not for the youngest of readers, but definitely still for young children. It's definitely good, I'm just a bit too old and it's just a bit too simplistic for me to truly appreciate it.
For a more adult (or teen/YA, I guess) retelling of this story, I recommend the novel Outlaw Wolves of the Currumpaw by Ahi Keheler. It's a more modern (slightly fictionalized) take on the story from both the humans' and wolves POV.
Rating: 3/5
No comments:
Post a Comment