I greatly enjoyed the surrealist fever dream story told here, but my children did not as much. The Five Wolves is a beautiful art piece that masterfully uses word clouds to depict a humdrum of voices in the backdrop. The story is odd, nonsensical in some ways, but communicated with absurd humor that keeps you turning the page. This is a hard one to recommend, but I think the adult graphic novel connoisseur with an appreciation for surrealism and modern art will enjoy this tale.

The Five Wolves, by award-winning Peter McCarty, is a delightful mashup of genres, narratives and themes. The book itself is part picture book and part graphic novel. The illustrations take the lead and guide the narrative. Each image and figure are drawn with pen in a fantastic and surrealistic way. In fact, it’s impossible to imagine this book being created by anyone other than McCarty who brings both the text and pictures together flawlessly. But that’s not all. The story is a “hero’s journey” of sorts for five artist wolves. They enter this “fairy tale” world – part medieval and part contemporary having adventures with cats, rabbits, people and a dragon. Along the way, they whip out their easels and canvases and begin to draw and paint. This leads to discussions about creation and art. What is art? Who is it for? Who can create it? Who can destroy it? Does it have to look only one way? And through it all (which is a journey both laughable and thought provoking), there are important issues raised about stereotypes of gender and “the other.” (My favorite “stereotype” is when eating cakes or pies are attributed to a particular gender.) The text box was also created by the author/illustrator who gives you stories within stories within stories. The main narrative is surrounded in a compelling way with debates, questions and conversations. This is a book for all ages, both children and adults, and especially the artist who lives within each of us.

Reading this felt like having a dream. It wasn't an unpleasant dream, necessarily, and at times it was even beautiful, but it wasn't terribly coherent. I do think the book suffered in ebook format; I think if I were reading a hard copy I might have had a clearer understanding of the layout and thus what the book was communicating. It's certainly fascinating to look to at, but it's not an easy story to follow and I do think kids might struggle to figure out HOW to read it. There's large text, which contains the thrust of the story, surrounded by smaller text that adds commentary on the main events. The smaller text does enhance the main story, but I think kids will try to read everything and be confused. I'll probably take a look at the hard copy of this when it comes in and see if it's any easier to understand. I have no idea who I would recommend this to besides maybe a Brian Selznik fan who isn't committed to a clear beginning, middle, and end (is that even a kid who exists?)

The illustrations in this book are out of this world!!!

The story is a little bit “Where the Wild Things Are” meets “Jumanji” with just a touch of “Alice in Wonderland”. I found this tale to be mysterious and unique. I often found myself smiling and giggling. A joy to read!!

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced reader copy.

This is a book for fans of David Wiesner, Brian Selsnick, and other middle grade artists who push the boundaries between picture books and novels. The typefacing is part illustration (the words are written wavy to create an ocean effect), part biased narrator (we never learn who the omnipotent narrator is but he weaves in philosophical thoughts or repeats phrases for atmosphere and effect). The drawings are gray scale with blue typing to show the ocean effect. It's quite a work of art, humor, cinematic effect, and theater, but as other commenters have said it does not work well as an ebook. I try to use the NetGalley reader for graphic novels and picture books, but even with a large monitor, I couldn't catch all of the text.

I think the dreamy, artsy kids who will love this will be introduced to it by a writing workshop, savvy librarian, or thoughtful teacher. It won't be for everyone, but the ones who connect with it will surely find the magic.

This book invites curiosity and activates the imagination. The gray scale was a great touch. The illustrations capture the reader and really encourage the reader to pause and question. The plot works very well. All of the elements worked well together.

I'm am unsure if reading the physical book would make a difference but, the format in my phone was super hard to read. The words, on top of words, and at an angle, was pretty distracting and made it really hard to follow the story. I'm still not even sure what I read. The illustrations are beautiful however. I think that alone is worth stars. I'm just guessing that this didn't translate well to Kindle. Thank you to the author, publishing, and Netgalley for a chance to read this book.

Very confused.

TL:DR
2 stars
Appropriate for Anyone
Primary appeal to Unsure
Fans of Chris Van Allsburg


To be clear, I love the work of Chris Van Allsburg, and this art is similar to that in ways. A little creepy, evocative of more information that lies just out of reach...

But this book just makes me confused. I am really unsure who the audience is.

I will heavily qualify this review by saying that the digital version did not read smoothly. The two page spreads were hard to see and the in person experience could be different.

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Thank you to NetGalley for providing an advance digital copy of this book for review. All opinions are my own.

KC
School Librarian for 3rd - 5th Grade
Storyteller
Lover of cheese & tiny boxes

This is such an amazing book. This is the story of artist traveling from ships, to seas, to castles and cities. All along the way they are creating art in the most interesting of situations and competing with their rivals the artist cats. This books has the most amazing artwork which as a teacher I think would be fantastic to have kids see the images and write their own adventures using the images before reading the actual book. Then they can compare and contrast the adventures the Five Wolves went on. However you bring it into your classroom or library, this is sure to be a fun read for all involved. The options for reading it are endless and I feel like reading more than once would still feel different each time.

In a way this book reminds me of Brian Selznick. He is the illustrator and author of the image of Hugo Cabaret. You have the illustrations telling more than half the story in the words there for clarity. Except the words are not clear. Our five wolves are artists. They like to paint, but they don’t like to ship a cat. A fish tries to eat a painting, they make a mural on a castle that then gets burnt down just so they can go to a city and make more art. This book is a little bit all over the place, but that’s part of what makes the story unique and interesting. And not only do you have the motion of the word you have like the thoughts of others around you at the same time so you can choose to read as little or as much of this as you’d like. This was interesting and I’m glad that somebody gave the author a chance to create it and publish it.

A beautiful book full of imagination! The illustrations are just the right side of dark with a healthy dose of atmosphere. The lettering of the story is amazing although a bit fussy to read. I was in a constant battle with what to read and what to leave as background.

I think this is going to work better as a physical book than it ever will as an ebook due to the intricate nature of the letter work and the prevalence of multi-page spreads, but it's still a gorgeous book with a lovely message about the power of artists to create community and change.

I look forward to getting my hands on a physical copy as soon as it's released in the fall and exploring all of the details that are difficult to see in the ebook version.

I'm especially interested in seeing what my students make of the numbers 😃

This absolutely beautiful ARC was provided by NetGalley.

This lighthearted book features some artistic wolves sailing on a distant planet, who discover other animals and lands that they don’t quite understand. The format is quirky and fun to read and the artwork is unique and expressive, but the plot is sometimes confusing to follow.

This enchanting tale surrounded by grayscale illustrations worthy of Brian Selznick — high praise, indeed! — looked so promising. Five artistically minded wolves sail their Viking ship encountering one adventure after the other. Sadly, even the world of fantastical wolves has short-sighted art critics and tasteless philistines and Flying Yorbas. However, this story goes around and around without going anywhere.

In the interest of full disclosure, I received this book from NetGalley and First Second Books in exchange for an honest review.

Netgalley ARC - Unfortunately this really didn't work for me. The text formatting alone is honestly a nightmare and very difficult for me to read. Atmospheric and weird, and not in a good way.

While the illustrations are adorable, the stylistic decisions re: the writing were overwhelming at best and will put most young readers completely out of their depth. The sheer quantity of words on each of the pages, as well as the decision to set many of them at an angle has created a book that is largely unreadable, especially on a computer. Hopefully, readers looking at a hard copy will have an easier time focusing on the text that matters or be able to read all the words on the page. This reviewer was so overwhelmed by the reading, that I mostly failed to take away anything from the story.

Reading this on a phone screen does not do it justice! The illustrations are beautifully soft and detailed with plenty of character. This book is pretty wild overall! Text pages are chock full of words, sometimes repeating to form what looks like waves or textures complimentary to the narrative. I would definitely like to give this another read through once it’s in print.