Bea Wolf

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Bea Wolf is a 2023 graphic novel written by Zach Weinersmith and illustrated by Boulet, retelling the story of Beowulf with modern suburban children. It was published by First Second Books.

Contents

Synopsis

In a land of children known for their feats of fun, the tree house Treeheart is besieged by the middle-aged Mr. Grindle, whose touch can bring a fate worse than death: adolescence and adulthood. To face this foe comes a child warrior: Bea Wolf.

Reception

Bea Wolf was a finalist for the 2024 Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story. [1]

School Library Journal called it "unconventional", "(l)ofty in its ambitions and artistic renderings," and "strangely perfect in its perfect strangeness", lauding Boulet's "intense linework and incredible shading" and emphasizing that the text is "meant to be read out loud". [2] The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books praised it as "magnificent" and "a wild embrace of absurdity and wit with exaggerated language used for maximum impact", whose "illustrations are no less epic than the story" and "invite careful examination". [3]

Kirkus Reviews considered that, despite its "slapdash magical realism," the book is "an unabashedly joyful ode to the freedom of the child's mind" and "wonderfully weird". [4] Publishers Weekly commended it as "lovingly crafted", "truly fresh [and] inventive", and "a joyously lyric, rapid-fire epic that honors the original's intricate linguistic constructions," noting its "racially diverse cast of fierce, distinctively rendered children." [5]

In The New York Times , Sarah Boxer was more critical, assessing the characters as having goals that "are tediously uniform: sweets, toys and staying up late," the plot as "long (and) confusing", and the art as "sometimes funny (but) mostly chaotic." Boxer particularly faulted the story's climax — rather than beheading Mr. Grindle, Bea Wolf reverts him to infancy — as being in violation of the story's internal logic, arguing that if being made into an adult is a punishment, then being made into an infant would be a reward. [6]

Sequels

Weinersmith plans to produce at least one sequel, which would be about Grendel's mother and the dragon. [7]

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References

  1. ↑ 2024 Hugo Awards, at TheHugoAwards.org; retrieved May 20, 2024
  2. ↑ Review of the Day: Bea Wolf by Zach Weinersmith, ill. Boulet, by Betsy Bird, in School Library Journal ; published September 27, 2023; retrieved May 20, 2024
  3. ↑ Bea Wolf by Zach Weinersmith (review), by April Spisak; in Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books ; Volume 76, Number 5, January 2023; pp. 145-146; published by Johns Hopkins University Press; doi:10.1353/bcc.2023.0000
  4. ↑ Bea Wolf, reviewed in Kirkus Reviews ; review posted online, November 15, 2022; published December 1, 2022; retrieved May 20, 2024
  5. ↑ BEA WOLF, reviewed in Publishers Weekly ; published January 12, 2023; retrieved May 20, 2024
  6. ↑ Graphic Novel Riffs on Literary Classics, by Sarah Boxer, in The New York Times ; published April 7, 2023; retrieved May 20, 2024
  7. ↑ Listen up! Bea Wolf is a brilliant retelling of a classic Old English saga—for kids, by Jennifer Ouelette, at Ars Technica ; published April 14, 2023; retrieved May 20, 2024
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