Wolfboy is clay-made magic in book form that kids want to see

Claymation scared the bejesus out of me when I was a kid. That and puppets. It’s ironic that as an adult I really enjoy both stop-motion/claymation, as well as, puppets. It’s the love and time that go into each that makes me enjoy it. To an extent, my thought process is that if they loved it this much to spend this much time creating it, then it must be great. I completely credit The Nightmare Before Christmas with part of this thinking. Wolfboy is another great example, but in this case, it’s somewhat of a combination of my old foibles.

Wolfboy is by Andy Harkness, who is an Emmy Award-winning art director. He worked at Disney for 25 years and now is at Sony Pictures Animation Studio. I mention all of this because when you look at Wolfboy one can sense a story. That sounds silly, of course, you should be able to sense a story, it’s an illustrated book, right?

When kids look at Wolfboy it feels like a physical thing they’re experiencing. The photographs have such depth that they feel like you can stick your hand into the book and touch what Wolfboy is doing. To be clear, Wolfboy is not a pop-up book, nor are they illustrations that were drawn. The creative process involved clay modeling, drawing, lights, shadows, and some expert use of photoshop. This video can explain the otherworldly appearance of Wolfboy in a very vivid manner. In this case, a video is worth a thousand words, isn’t it?

So, the book is fascinating to look at, but will kids want to read it? Based on the group of kindergarten classes that I read the book to it’s a resounding yes. The story focuses on Wolfboy, a large, blue, wolf-like creature with long arms and big, red eyes. It’s stalking the forest looking for something. Wolfboy walks like a zombie, its arms outstretch and flopping around helplessly due to their freakish length. As it wanders the forest, it constantly asks where the rabbits are. The readers also see that Wolfboy is hungry and a bit cross. It’s jumping over massive ravines, climbing tall trees, wading through alligator-infested swamps, and more in search of some long-eared creatures.

All the while readers will be able to see a rabbit or two on each page, even as Wolfboy is yelling for them. “It’s like Where’s Waldo”, one of my students yelled out as I was reading the book. Well, in a way it is, but the thrust of this book is the reader’s joy in following the wolf and the rabbits as they go through the forest. Wolfboy is hungry and while the rabbits are friendly, they’re most likely quite tasty too.

That is the tension that holds the book together. The process of young audiences figuring out the relationship between the rabbits and Wolfboy is quite funny. Early elementary school ages will talk aloud as the rabbits get closer and closer to Wolfboy. “He’s going to eat them” and “Be careful rabbits” were just a couple of the things, my class, that day was saying. It was a kindergarten version of high school kids yelling at the teenage baby sitter in a horror movie not to go into the room with the closed closet door where the audience had just seen the crazy person who escaped from the mental institution go.

Adult readers will be able to ham up the book in all the right places. Those older readers will know on just which page to pause and ask the audience what they think will happen to the rabbits.

After I read Wolfboy, a couple of the kids asked if they could look at the book at their desk by themselves.  Unfortunately, due to COVID, they couldn’t borrow the book. However, this is the kind of book that young kids will want to look at for leisure reading. They’ll love the big, simple phrases that are punctuated with the immersive photographs. That’s another aspect that my class loved.

The class enjoyed the book while I was reading it to them. However, I stopped reading it, just for a moment to explain that the things they were seeing were actually clay sculptures. It was a high concept for some of the students, but most of them got it and it was that audience that came up to my desk to ask to look at the book again.

Wolfboy is by Andy Harkness and available on Bloomsbury Children’s Books.

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