Into the Wild By Sarah Beth Durst Release Date: Buy it Today! Razorbill/Penguin Young Readers Ratings Action Romance NA Characters Overall Purchase on Amazon. Purchase at Powell’s. Find independent bookstores.

Rapunzel and the rest of the fairytale characters escaped from the Wild (a monster/essence that thrives on fairytale conformity). The Wild couldn’t be destroyed, but Rapunzel managed to prune it into a manageable shape and guards it in her home in central Massachusetts, along with her twelve-year-old daughter Julie and adopted son, Puss-in-Boots.

Julie doesn’t feel like she fits in anywhere. Not with her classmates who have fathers that didn’t die in the Wild and brothers who are human instead of cats. Not with her mother and her mother’s fairytale friends, who will always have the Wild in common and a life Julie can never understand.

And then someone wishes the Wild free,- and Julie is suddenly living in her own fairytale as she fights her way through the Wild to her mother’s new tower.  She will have to elude princes and witches, traps set by the Wild which just wants everyone to conform and fit into a story. Ordinary people quickly find themselves wearing a red hood or attracted to candy houses made out of the former Dairy Hut. Once a story is begun, a red apple bitten, an animal asking for help, the Wild will do everything in its power to force the person to its path and lead them to their ending where they live happily ever after without any pesky memories of how life used to be. In other words, everything around Julie is a tool of the Wild, and in order to beat it back, she will have to give up what she thinks she wants and realize that she can make her own tale and place in the world.

Why didn’t I pick up this book sooner? It’s been on my radar since before it was out, back when I stumbled across the author’s website. I loved how Sarah had fake reviews from the fairytale characters, and the site did a good job overall of selling the book. Then it came out, and I constantly debated breaking my strict no-hardcover rule to buy it (of course those rules are flexible based on how recently I had a job and paycheck, but at the time, I was being tight). Finally, Sarah randomly took pity on me and offered to send me a copy of the book for review. I eagerly jumped at the chance, put it in my to-read pile… and let it linger. So, two days ago, I grabbed it off the pile and didn’t put it down.

Fairytales have rules and order to them, and I’m always in love with books that examine and play with that structure. Some, like Talking with Dragons and Ella Enchanted, do a good job blending the stereotypes and expected consequences into a brand new, and usually funny, story. Into the Wild though is in that rare class of book that actually takes on the essence of the fairytale itself, making it into a beast with a mind of its own. The only other book I can think of that did this well is an adult series called The Fairy Godmother by Mercedes Lackey. In those books, fairytales have a magic of their own called the tradition, and it strives to shape people’s lives into those tales. Here, the Wild is a physical entity, taking over the Earth and forcing all within it into its own mold.

Julie was also a great main characters: strong, determined, flawed, and realistic. I’m not one for lecturing on "Oh, well, that is a great role model for young girls," but if you’re going to get your role models from fiction, Julie is a great one. The humanity of her character is core to the story, just like it should be in any fantasy story. It doesn’t matter the setting–books are about the people we are and the people we might become.

If this book was missing anything, it would have to be a map.  Now, I’m not all that big on maps in books, but I think a map of the town taken over by the Wild would have been nice. Or perhaps a map on the author’s website. I was never quite sure of the size or layout of the town. That didn’t matter when Julie was seeing a place she used to know that was now transformed, but it did matter in the fact that I would have liked to have been able to keep better track of her progress in getting to the different places.

Ratings Reasons:
Action 5 – This book was fast paced and a great adventure story.

Romance NA – There is none, but that’s okay.

Characters 5 – I loved everyone in this book. Sarah did a great job of expanding on the typical fairytale characters, but still keeping them true to their standards.

Overall 5 – I’d recommend this book to anyone, adult or child, that likes fairytales. Reading it was a very enjoyable experience.

Extras:
The author, Sarah Beth Durst, has a great website and blog. Her blog is especially worth checking out as she posts interviews with fairytale characters and exposes readers to different, lesser-known fairytales she discovered while researching the book. Plus, a cover is up for the sequel book, Out of the Wild.

There are few books that I’ve read that really attack the idea of fairytale characters knowing they are living in a fairytale. Both books I can think of are adult books and not really appropriate for the under sixteen reader. But those books are Fables (my review) by Bill Willingham and The Fairy Godmother by Mercedes Lackey. Older readers should definitely check these books out.

Surlalune Fairytales is a great resource for everything fairytales and a good starting point for historical and social research pertaining to those tales.

Parents: 10 + Pretty much any kid whose reading level is high enough to get through it could enjoy this book. Nothing bad, unless you’re afraid they might worry about the Wild under their bed

Trackback Post

Related Posts