Out of the Woods: A True Story of an Unforgettable Event by Rebecca Bond (review)

Most kids are fascinated with nature and particularly with animals, but their reallife encounters with most wildlife are likely to be constrained and tamed. Books, therefore, offer satisfying if vicarious opportunities to encounter wildlife beyond the occasional pavement-savvy squirrel or zoo-confined monkey. Bond’s Out of the Woods both encapsulates that desire and satisfies it, chronicling the extraordinary experience of a young boy in 1914 Ontario.

Young Antonio Giroux loves living in his mother’s hotel, where the trappers and lumberjacks and travelers stay, surrounded by the Ontario wilderness. There are no other children there, so he happily tags along with the hotel workers all day and revels in the facility’s fascinating guests, who speak in many languages and carry fishing and hunting equipment. In the woods, he’s more conflicted; he knows that the animals are smart to stay hidden with the hotel’s guests hunting them, but he longs to see more of the bears and deer, moose and foxes that call the wilderness home. His wish comes true in an unexpected way: when a fire rages through the forest, he, his mother, and the hotel guests all take refuge in the adjacent lake, and soon the animals seek safety there as well (“Wolves stood beside deer, foxes beside rabbits. And people and moose stood close enough to touch”). Fortunately, the hotel is spared, and humans and animals all go back to their regular lives, but little Antonio is left with an indelible memory.

The account, based on the author’s grandfather’s youthful experience, is more of a vignette than a plot-rich story, but Bond brings it all vividly alive. Even before the drama of the fire, her evocative, gently cadenced prose (“Here it smelled wonderful—of sweet tobacco and wood, wool and leather, and sweat”) effectively conjures Antonio’s fortunate life at the hotel, unobtrusively sharing adult work and camaraderie and enjoying enviable independence. The prose eschews dialogue entirely, giving the scenario a touch of distant glamour as well as a silent-movie stillness. That effect is most evident in the climactic moment where human and animal alike shelter in the lake, an event that is given full haunting magic without ever losing sight of the desperation behind the strange accord.

The line and watercolor art uses dense hatching and cross-hatching so extensively that it suggests etching at times, but lines remain fluid; there are some echoes, in the soft linework, of Garth Williams’ Little House illustrations. The palette leans toward vintage tones, whether it be in the earthy wood of the hotel or the yellow-to-sepia glow of the lantern, but the detail of the events remains immediate, putting viewers in the middle of the period action. Bond draws smoothly on the architecture of the hotel, finding rhythms in the plank flooring and hallways, and also finds visual rhythm in the people, whether it’s in the line of suspenders at the dining table or the eerie, startlingly vertical formation of the humans in the lake against the amorphously blazing forest.

Use this as a lead-in to Hill’s Bo at Ballard Creek (BCCB 9/13), another celebration of period kid life amid captivating wildness, as a dramatic and unexpected slice of historical life, or as a creative take on animal stories. An author’s note gives background for the story. (See p. 12 for publication information.)