Wild Things

by Clay Carmichael

Overview

Stubborn, self-reliant eleven-year-old Zoe, recently orphaned, is forced to move to the country to live with her strange and bad-tempered uncle. In this moving coming-of-age novel, an ALA Notable Children's Book and Kirkus Reviews Best Children's Book of the Year, Zoe and her uncle learn about love, trust and the strength of family ties.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781629795898
Publisher:	Astra Publishing House
Publication date:	11/04/2016
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	248
File size:	3 MB
Age Range:	5 - 8 Years

About the Author

Clay Carmichael has written award-winning children’s books that have been translated into many languages. She teaches writing and illustrating and lives in Carrboro, North Carolina. This is her first novel.

Read an Excerpt

I'd hoped for better, Henry's being a heart doctor. A job like that, you'd think he might actually have a heart.
As usual, I pushed the cart down the aisle myself, taking what I needed off the shelves, the new grown-up as useless as those before him. Negative help, as Mama's friend Manny used to say, negative being less than none. No big deal. Grocery shopping and I were old friends, along with toilet scrubbing, vacuuming, and wash.
Said grown-up—my before-last-Monday-never-heard-of Uncle Henry—trailed behind, … alternating between keeping five or six paces back like I was contagious and breathing down my neck in the unlikely event I needed him for something. I wondered why he'd claimed me at all. —FROM THE BOOK

Editorial Reviews

"Carmichael gives a familiar plot fresh new life in this touching story with a finely crafted sense of place. . . . Zoë's fierce, funny voice is compelling." —Booklist

* "A tribute to the power of story, this is ultimately a tale of hope and redemption. Zoe Royster, peer to the literary heroines she so loves, is as memorable in her own way as the Great Gilly Hopkins, Opal Buloni and Anne Shirley." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"Carmichael's a smooth and evocative stylist. . . . [Zoe] is at times a new-millennium Shirley Temple in her relentlessly adorable moppetry." —Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

From the Publisher

Gr 4–6—Reminiscent in many ways of Kate DiCamillo's Because of Winn-Dixie, Clay Carmichael's novel (Front Street, 2009) tells the humorous and heartbreaking story of a number of wild characters both human and animal. The narration is mainly told in the first person by feisty 11-year-old orphan Zoe who has been sent to live with Uncle Henry, a famous sculptor, after her mother's suicide. Mr. C'mere, a feral cat, narrates occasional chapters. Liz Morton delivers the cat's thoughts in a cool, matter-of-fact way, and does an excellent job of bringing the other characters to life. Zoe acts as a catalyst in her new surroundings, bringing together various solitary people, Mr. C'Mere, and a mysterious white deer. As the relationships build so too does Zoe's sense of well-being and security. Carmichael's accomplished handling of characterization is all the more compelling when compared to the many plot-driven aspects of this story. Highly recommended.—B. Allison Gray, Santa Barbara Public Library, Goleta Branch, CA

School Library Journal