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Cerrie Burnell's Wilder than Midnight is a wolf-filled fairy tale for 9 year olds about a girl raised in the forest and a girl who strays off the path.
Wild Rose has grown up in Silverthorne Forest, sleeping among the wolves and singing with the Forest Folk who took her in. She rides a borrowed black stallion through the dark. She dances along silk wires strung between the treetops. And she's desperate to see what lies beyond the woods, even if it means hacking her way through a wall of thorns that nobody has ever crossed.
In a village at the forest's edge lives Saffy. She's shy, she loves birds and she can call magpies down with a song. Her dad is a huntsman who once served at the castle. When she's sent through the forest on her own with a basket for her grandma, she's given a beautiful scarlet cloak in return for delivering a secret letter.
You can probably guess that wearing red in wolf country isn't the best idea!
The book opens with a dark little tale. A baby is born in the castle with one arm that ends in a stump, which people there call the Mark of the Witch. Her mother tells a huntsman to drown her in the river. He can't do it, and carries her into the forest to the wolves instead. There's also a mention of a village woman who came back from working at the castle with all her teeth pulled out. None of it is lingered on, but a sensitive reader could find that opening upsetting.
On the flip side, Wild Rose is anything but weak. She swings an axe, gallops through the forest at night and holds a lantern out on the end of her arm to light a lost girl's way. If your reader loves a fearless heroine, she's a brilliant one.
It really does read like a fairy tale told out loud. The sentences are full of moonlight, snow and spells (a protection charm needs three rose thorns, three hazelnuts and three nights of starlight). You'll spot pieces of stories you know too. A red cloak, a basket for Grandma, a wall of thorns standing between the forest and a castle, an apothecary brewing a potion that sends you to sleep for a hundred hours.
If they fall for the wolves, The Wolf Wilder is in the library too. Feo lives with her mum in a snowy forest where wolves come in through the window, whether it's open or not.
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