Book Review: The Wolf and I by Liesbeth Rosendaal

 

 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 De wolf en ik.

A new wolf book got published in the Netherlands and obviously I had to check it out ASAP. Spoilers ahead.

Kik is a passionate twelve-year-old who loves nature and everything about it. In her free time she can often be found birdwatching at the Veluwe national park. But then there's reports of a photographer getting attacked by a wolf in the park, and there's even talks of the wolf possibly having to be shot because of this. This of course horrifies Kik, especially when she sees the photographer acting suspicious around other wildlife. She, her best friend Marty and her rival Jay decide to go on a quest to find out what exactly the photographer is doing, and if the wolf in question is even dangerous at all.

I liked this book for how relevant it is, and how it is clearly based on real events. I live in the Netherlands, and wolves have been back here from extinction for a few years now. And there have been situations similar to this, photographers feeding wolves, and wolves getting dangerously close to humans (even with a few reported "attacks", though these are usually the animals defending themselves or their territory). So this book is definitely relevant to the current issues about human-wolf interactions in the Netherlands, which I can appreciate.

It handles the topic well, and shows that you can enjoy nature while on a respectful distance and while not disturbing or feeding the wildlife. Kik is clearly very passionate about nature and will do anything in her power to protect the wildlife, but her ways of going about it also aren't perfect as she ends up scaring other wildlife away in her efforts.

I definitely appreciate this book's message of "enjoy wildlife at a safe distance". It doesn't dance around the fact that wolves can be dangerous (as can other wildlife like wild boar and deer), but it also acknowledges that unless they're being provoked or purposefully drawn to humans they'll rarely attack. The book also has a small out-of-character afterword from the author about what to do when you encounter a wolf in the wild, much appreciated.

The moral aside, this book had some neat characters. I liked Kik, Marty was a neat best friend, and Jay had the best arc out of everyone, going from a bully who dislikes Kik to a close friend of hers who equals her passion for nature. There's also several chapters from a she-wolf's POV, so I guess that this technically qualifies somewhat as an animal xenofiction, but the wolf chapters are very brief and are more so there for extra context than the wolf being a really deep character in her own right. But honestly that was fine, Kik was a solid enough protagonist to carry the story for me.

I also like how the villain in this, the photographer Roelof, isn't all that evil. Like yes, him feeding the wildlife and claiming the wolf needs to be killed because it bit him sucks, but he's still a person. He's not some kind of evil obsessed mustache-twirling cartoon villain. He feels like a real person, because people like him exist. They're in the Dutch news frequently when it comes to the topic of wolves. So I appreciate that Rosendaal kept her antagonist human and didn't feel the need to make him over the top evil or anything.

There's also a subplot about Kik's fathers threatening to have the family move to Amsterdam, where there's less nature, and Kik of course hating this because she's obsessed with roaming the Veluwe looking for wildlife. I think that this subplot was handled in a quite satisfying way. It doesn't have a perfectly happy ending, as Kik and her family will still be moving to Amsterdam, away from the Veluwe and Kik's friends, but at the same time Kik ends up being slightly more open to the idea when her fathers decide to move into a house close to the forest of Amsterdam. So there's a neat message about compromise here. Nothing groundbreaking, but it's handled well. Another recurring theme in this book is "adults never listen", but through this message and how the climax is resolved, Kik and her friends learn that sometimes adults do listen.

So yeah, a solid book. If you like wolves or nature I think you're bound to like this one.

Rating: 4/5