Wildful

About this book

This is a stunningly beautiful and really unique graphic novel with very few words. 

A girl goes out with her dog and at first is too busy staring at her phone, headphones firmly on, while her dog starts noticing wildlife and pulls her into a piece of wasteland to follow a fox. The dog pulls so hard she drops the lead and he runs off. 

As she chases her dog, the girl begins to notice her surroundings and then finally finds her dog with a boy around her age. When the girl gets home, we meet her mum, who is living with depression.

The next day the girl goes back to the open space and the boy helps her to really see the rich wildlife, just right there in a patch of wasteland – the squirrels, the birds, the trees, the flowers, the unfurling ferns – and it feels like a magical place once you start looking.  

This is a quiet little revolution of a book, so beautifully conceived and designed, a real work of art. The power of nature to heal and replenish is the central theme, as Mum finds inspiration to start enjoying life again. 

And children reading it will hopefully find inspiration too, to pay attention to our beautiful world even if they live in the middle of a city; to see that wildfulness is mindfulness.