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Spur: A Wolf's Story


Spur: A Wolf's Story
Written by Eliza Robertson
Illustrated by Nora Aoyagi
Greystone Books, 2020. Picture book.

When Spur is separated from her brother and the rest of their pack during a frightening encounter with a helicopter, she is left lost, lonely, and confused. Hunting for food, fending for herself, and finding her brother are all difficult tasks, made even worse by the injury she sustained while running from the helicopter. Now, she must figure out how to survive and find her pack again, in a landscape that is already sparse in resources. Luckily, Spur might know just the way to find her brother again.

Nora Aoyagi's soft wilderness illustrations are sweet and keep the dire situation from feeling too fraught to read. Eliza Robertson expertly tells Spur's story, while encompassing the larger picture of the real life danger that faces wildlife. A background section at the end of the book clarifies the situations that the book is calmly introducing, with ideas on how to help.

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