Wild - a bookwrap

Unwrapping an amazing, brilliant book today.  This is Hawaiian artist, Emily Hughes' debut book and personally, I hope she never stops creating. It is one you will absolutely want to have in your collection. Storywraps audience...presenting to you..."Wild":

Unwrapping further...fasten your seatbelt these illustrations are truly stunning so please take a few moments to just appreciate and get lost in her images. They are beautiful indeed.

This wonderfully, innocent, wild feral child knows the meaning of being free.  She is raised by creatures in the forest: taught to talk by birds, to eat by bears, to play by foxes... yes, she truly is unshamedly, irrefutable, and irrespressibly.....WILD! 

Then one day she is captured by some things that look oddly like her but much bigger and she is taken out of her happy, nurturing environment and brought into civilization.  These strange creatures don't talk right, don't eat properly, and certainly don't know how to play right.  They live in a no green zone where animals are non-existent (except their pets), there are no shady, protective trees to climb, and absolutely no rivers to run and splash in.  It is a concrete habitat called an apartment, sterile and dead.  They try to tame her wild free-style hair-do, endlessly try to teach her to read and behave herself, and of course, have proper table manners.  The rules, restrictions, the erasing of who she truly is becomes unbearable.  This once eccentric little free spirit rebels and longs to be free so she can be herself once again.

The wild child decides to take her fate into her own hands and with her unorthodox caretaker's dog and cat accompanying her,  she escapes from her captors and goes back to her happy home, her happy life, the place where she knows beyond a shadow of a doubt she belongs and can flourish.  The last sentence of the book sums it up perfectly: "Because you cannot tame something so happily wild." Period.

Emily Hughes was born in Hawaii, USA but lives and works in the United Kingdom.
Her work has been exhibited across the capital and her book Nana Shaped Like a Banana came second in the 2012 Macmillan Prize for Childrens’ Picture Books.

Wild is Emily’s very first book and we’re thrilled to be publishing it.

We spent a little time with Emily, finding out how she works.

What kind of things inspire you?

I’m inspired by Chinese cinema, the costumes and the colours. Illustrators such as Blair Lent, John Bauer and Gyo Fujikawa are always inspirational. There are so many gems waiting to be discovered in pre-owned book stores, or even in my parents’ vintage stash.

Many of my favorite books growing up were second hand, I loved Arnold Lobel’s Giant John, and Ice Cream Cone Coot and other Rare Birds, DePaola’s Strega Nona, Remy Charlip. Basically books from my parents’ shelves – I love 60′s/70′s children’s illustration.

Tell us a little bit about your working day.

My usual day of drawing starts off with an apple, and I sit at my desk for a couple of hours, playing jump rope with my friends or bustin’ a move in the hallway to break up the time spent hunched over at my desk.

Read on and read always!

It's a wrap.

Contact me at:  storywrapsblog@gmail.com