Wolfstongue

Blog tour: Wolfstongue Sam Thompson illustrated by Anna Tromop

I’m thrilled to be hosting a stop on the #Wolfstongue Blog Tour!

Sam Thompson pours heart and soul into this debut fable, inspired by his own son’s difficulty with speech, something that happens naturally for many. Thompson writes with sentiment about the strength of language and the relationships between humans and the natural world. Wolfstongue tells the story of a boy (Silas) with speech difficulties, who embarks on a soul-searching exploration into the hidden world of talking animals. Befriending a family of wolves, who have become ensnared by foxes – he must face his struggle with words to win back the wolves’ freedom.

I really enjoy reading and sharing books that delve into the struggles and difficulties that children often encounter silently, trapped in an excruciating never-ending void of angst or even embarrassment, woven seamlessly through an adventure story, written for children. They are powerful teaching opportunities, comfort and solace concealed by magic and adventure that provide an opportunity to see themselves represented in a story or develop emotional intelligence for others in a similar situation or whom they might encounter in the future. Wolfstongue removes the confinements which bind children to a life of suffering, loneliness and silence.

Wolfstongue is perfect for confident readers, aged 9+ or as an adult lead read-aloud. Strong themes of friendship, love, loss and brimming with nature. This fable is reminiscent of Fantastic Mr Fox, reinforcing the sly, crafty fox character dominating other animals to fulfil its wishes. Often Wolves are depicted as ghastly, vicious villains but in this story they are gentle, submissive and vulnerable, characteristics reflected in the protagonist: Silas.

About Wolfstongue…

Deep in the Forest, the foxes live in an underground city. They didn’t build it themselves: led by Reynard the fox, they enslaved wolves to do the work. By teaching language to the wolves, the clever foxes control them with the power of speech.

Now Isengrim, Hersent and their pups are the only wolves left in the Forest. They use clay with magical properties to heal their wounds, and move between the human and animal worlds using hidden passageways as they fight to survive.

One day, Isengrim gets injured. He is helped by a boy, Silas. Silas finds speaking difficult – except when in the company of the wolves.

When the foxes kidnap the wolf pups, Silas is determined to help his new friends to rescue their young. He must find his voice to undermine Reynard’s power and destroy the foxes’ city.

A lyrical fable about the power of language and the relationship between humans and the natural world.

Stunning, raw and evocative illustrations by Anna Tromop bring this story to life in an innately biological and natural way.

From the author…

Sam’s top 10 nature-themed books for children:

Maybe all books for children are nature-themed, if nature means the world beyond ourselves, a world that we didn’t create and can’t always understand. Here are ten of my favourite stories about what the natural world means to us:

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

‘The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another’… The land of the Wild Things, where Max travels after being sent to bed without his supper, is a glimpse of nature itself: a jungle full of monsters, frightening but enticing, both inside and outside his head.

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin

In the archipelago of Earthsea, wizards cast their spells by naming: call anything by its true name and it is yours to command. Le Guin’s book was revelatory when I first read it at school. It’s a beautiful invented world, a thrilling adventure and a new way of understanding how language gives us power over the world.

The Owl Service by Alan Garner

Alison, Roger and Gywn, teenagers staying in a cottage in a remote Welsh valley, are mysteriously compelled to re-enact the legend of a tragic love-triangle that took place there in ancient times. I didn’t understand this book when I read it as a child and I don’t really understand it now, but that doesn’t matter. It’s a haunting story of how human lives are shaped by patterns of landscape and deep time.

Collected Poems for Children by Ted Hughes

Hughes’s poems for children are a huge compendium of the natural world – creatures from flies to pigs, foxes to wolves, limpets to whales, seen freshly and made as strange as they really are: ‘the beasts who ignore / These ways of ours’.

A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson

Stevenson’s poems for children seem so light and simple — he said they were only ‘rhymes’ and ‘jingles’ — but they exactly capture fragments of childhood. Above all they evoke the intense, imaginative attention you pay to the tiniest details of the natural world when you’re small: treasuring the nuts you gathered in a wood, or turning a patch of gorse into an imaginary landscape.

Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot

Eliot’s cats are sometimes almost human — they can be gangsters, magicians, burglars and actors — but they are always deeply feline as well. It’s obvious that the poems in Old Possum grew from long, fond, attentive observation of cats, from their habits of ‘profound meditation’ to the Jellicle cats washing behind their ears and drying between their toes for the Jellicle Ball. Fantastical as it is, this is a nature book too.

Varjak Paw by S. F. Said

Varjak Paw is another fantasy that springs from loving familiarity with the nature of cats. Varjak is a sheltered Mesopotamian Blue cat who has never left the house and garden where he lives. He begins to learn a secret feline martial art, and soon finds himself out in the city — where nature is red in tooth and claw.

The Lord of the Flies by William Golding

I read this school and have never got over it. The island where the schoolboys are stranded is nature-as-paradise, ‘like the Coral Island’, but the nature that emerges from within the castaways is cruelty and violence, superstition and scapegoating. Is that what ‘nature’ really means?

The Shepherd’s Crown by Terry Pratchett

The final Discworld novel was also the fifth in a sequence about a young witch called Tiffany Aching. Tiffany lives on the Discworld’s equivalent of the chalk downs of Wiltshire where Pratchett grew up, and in these final stories, written for younger readers, the great comic fantasist drew a new kind of inspiration from the natural environment he knew so well.

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

The story of Rat, Mole, Toad and Badger creates a sunny myth of a certain kind of English landscape, from the banks of the Thames to the Wild Wood. As well as messing about on the river and yelling ‘poop poop’, Grahame’s animals often seem to long for a state of nature that they can’t quite grasp, even when they encounter the Great God Pan among the reeds.

Be sure to check out other stops on the tour!!

Wolfstongue Sam Thompson illustrated by Anna Tromop is published by Little Island Books.

Order your copy from Little Island Books and find out more about Wolfstongue: http://littleisland.ie/books/wolfstongue/

More from Sam Thompson: https://samthompsonwriter.com/about/

Follow Anna Tromop on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AnnaTromop

Follow Little Island Books on Twitter: https://twitter.com/LittleIslandBks

Thank you for my copy and inviting me on this blog tour, good luck in the wild Wolfstongue!!