Book Review: Silas and the Wolf by Selma Noort

 

 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 Silas en de wolf.

Yet another wolf book to add to the list. Gotta read 'em all. Spoilers ahead.

After the loss of his father, a boy named Silas and his mother move down south in the Netherlands where his mother has a new job. Silas has to adjust to his new life here and soon befriends a girl named Rinke and a blind older woman named Johanna. However, things in town all change when a wolf is spotted nearby, especially once Silas comes across it himself.

Okay so this is a children's book (for like, young children, not tweens/teens) so I don't hold it to the exact same standards as most of my reviews, which focus on a tween/teen/YA audience. But at the same time, this book really left some things to be desired for me.

Despite the book being about Silas and the wolf, the wolf himself appears actually very little, only once or twice. And then just somewhat vanishes and the remainder of the story is just about Silas and his reading competition. Which is like, cool, I guess, and the link between the two stories is that the wolf inspired him to start writing his own fairy tales, but I just didn't really feel the connection. It just felt a bit abrupt. Also, like, writing and reading was already a big passion of Silas before encountering the wolf, so it just didn't feel like much of a connection there.

The story was otherwise just okay. I mostly liked the wholesome friendship between Johanna and Silas. They had a nicely developed bond I enjoyed reading. But the other characters and relationships I was lukewarm about at most. I didn't care much about Silas himself, I thought he was a pretty boring protagonist outside of his passion for reading and writing. I also wasn't that invested with his other friendships and the other people he comes across, most notably a few hunters and farmers who want the wolf dead. They were too one-note and boring to me.

An aspect of this book that surprised me is that it is heavily implied that Silas' father died in the MH17 crash, where a plane was shot down above Ukraine. The manner of his father's death doesn't tie into the story anywhere, but it's brought up and it just surprised me. Kind of dark to bring up in a children's book like this. I mean, not that parent characters dying in another way isn't dark or anything, but usually when media have kids with dead parent characters it's either not brought up or they died some "common" way like an illness or car crash. 

But this book almost explicitly mentions his father being a victim of the MH17 crash. The exact flight is not mentioned but it's implied so heavily that everyone who knows what MH17 is will instantly make the connection. Just a pretty dark backstory though it doesn't really do anything for the story overall. It's just brought up once. The story is more so about Silas and his relationships to the other characters, though he does bring up his father a couple of times. 

Overall this book wasn't all that noteworthy. If you want to read it for the wolf content you'll be disappointed since the wolf only appears a few brief times and then vanishes. I like the protagonist's passion for reading and his relationship with Johanna but outside of that this book wasn't all that good or memorable to me.

Rating: 2.5/5