Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Feb 2012
160 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Three teenagers - a sharp, well-to-do girl named Bounce and two struggling boys named Wiggins and Orange - are holding a four-year old girl hostage in Orange's basement. The little girl answers to "the Frog" and seems content to play a video game about wolves all day long, a game that parallels the reality around her. As the stakes grow higher and the guilt and tension mount, Wiggins cracks and finally brings Frog to a trusted adult. Not for the faint of heart, Adam Rapp's powerful, mesmerizing narrative ventures deep into psychological territory that few dare to visit.
Ages 14+
"Starred Review. Readers should know the kind of grueling, soulful, gut-punching work to expect from Rapp. Still, be warned: this is his most hellish - and hellishly readable - vision yet... he's also creating, book by book, a vital library of the furies and hopes of a forgotten underclass, and always in their own confused, desperate, and endlessly resourceful voices... few YA authors are so consistently lauded. Multiple copies may be required." - Booklist
"Starred Review. The author continues to push the boundaries of fiction for teens by providing an unrelentingly real and intensely powerful voice for the disenfranchised youth who dangle on society's edge, forgotten until they commit random acts of violence because they have been shown no other way. Hard to read, impossible to forget." - Kirkus Reviews
"The raw and edgy story line and language have a powerful impact, and the novel will deservedly find an appreciative audience." - School Library Journal
"It's an unrelentingly bleak indictment of a world far gone, where the best - perhaps only - option is to abandon society altogether." - Publishers Weekly
This information about The Children and the Wolves was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Adam Rapp is the acclaimed author of Punkzilla, a Michael L. Printz Honor Book; Under the Wolf, Under the Dog, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist and winner of the Schneider Family Book Award; and 33 Snowfish, an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults. He is also an accomplished playwright, a writer for Season Three of the HBO series In Treatment, and a Pulitzer Prize finalist for Drama in 2007. Adam Rapp lives in New York City.
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