Book Review: The Book of Wolves by Pieter Feller

 Note: The title of this book has been translated into English by me for the reading comprehension of this blog's viewers as the book itself isn't available in English (yet). The original title reads Het wolvenboek

A Dutch non-fiction I've had my eye on for a while but never ended up getting to until now.

This book aimed at slightly younger readers (mostly tweens/teens) tells us a lot of information about the wolf. And, unlike many wolf non-fictions I've talked about here, this one is rather recent and has a lot of up-to-date wolf information. It tackles subjects such as wolf behavior, hunting techniques, expressions and pack life, wolves throughout history, wolves in mythology, fairy tales and legends, wolves in more current media, threats of the wolf, the state of wolves in various locations over the world, etc. There's also some short fictional stories spread throughout.

A rather good book. Honestly, with this one being advertised as a book for younger readers (it's sold in the children's book sections at the bookstore, at least) I really expected it to be rather juvenile and contain very bare bones information like a lot of other wolf books I've read for this age demographic. However, the book is fairly elaborate with a lot of text. There's still many appealing-looking illustrations. 

The one thing visually I was kind-of missing in this book was some actual photos. The drawings look good but some things really are shown or come across better in real-life photos. I'm all for including a lot illustrations in your book, but if you're writing about a real animal and some of the illustrations are (almost) direct re-creations of photos I've seen before on the news (e.g. a still of footage of a wolf killing sheep at a farm) you might as well just use the actual still. Or to show the differences between wolf subspecies, using photos also is a handy tool since there's a lot of wolf subspecies that closely resemble one another.

But for the contents of the book itself, I was very pleased and pleasantly surprised by how serious it took its audience and how much text it contained. This definitely isn't a book for very young children; it doesn't have as many short chapters and too many illustrations. But honestly I like that. This is a good book for tweens/teens to learn about wolves. It doesn't talk down to them, but it's still pleasant too look at and a bit more accessible than some more mature wolf non-fiction I've read. 

I think I may have spotted one wrong or dated fact in this book, however it was minor enough for me not to make a note of so it wasn't that important. And especially considering how accurate and up-to-date this current book is (sans some very recent events regarding wolves in the Netherlands that took place after this book was published).

Overall I consider this a good modern resource for wolf fans (including adults like me) and do recommend it! Just not for very young children (unless being read to them, since there's a lot of small text). I also think the short stories were a welcome bonus.

Rating: 4/5