Picturing the Wolf in Children's Literature (review)

Claude Lévi-Strauss famously remarked that "animals are good to think with," and that's especially true of the wolf, as Debra Mitts-Smith shows in this exemplary analysis of illustrated wolf narratives for children. The wolf, as she points out, has long been a highly contested symbol or site of identity construction, associated with such a broad range of qualities and behaviors as to be rather obviously about human nature as well. We are the wolf, in short, even as (especially when) we see the wolf as enemy. Picturing the Wolf in Children's Literature offers an engaging look at five centuries' worth of Western European and North American wolf-centered texts, ranging from fables and medieval hunting books to nineteenth-century animal biographies and to twentieth-century picture books, including information books and fractured fairy tales.

Concentrating on illustrated texts, Mitts-Smith offers a straightforward assessment of the broad perspectival shift from wolf-as-villain to wolf-asvictim/hero. Yet this is no simple exercise in theming; Mitts-Smith also emphasizes the interdependence of the real and the symbolic, raising difficult questions about wolf-human relation as well as the broader relays between "human" and "animal" as well as wild and domestic. In the introduction Mitts-Smith draws on psychology, anthropology, and religious studies to explore how "we use animals to understand, add meaning to, and cope with our lives" (5). She reviews the insights of (among others) Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, philosopher Paul Shepard, and psychologist Gail F. Melson (who takes up animal-child bonding in her excellent Why the Wild Things Are). Research on biophilia also informs Mitts-Smith's orientation. Thus, while she tells a clear story about the wolf's cultural makeover, she also points to the complexities and contradictions of animal-human relation.

Chapters are organized around successive wolf conceptualizations, although these are not completely sequential or chronological. In fact, as she emphasizes throughout, all conceptualizations remain operative, even as some are now more dominant. The final chapter excepted (more on that later), the chapter titles make pretty clear the overall shift(s): 1. Wolf as Predator; 2. Wolf as Social Being; 3. Wolf Undone; 4. Wolf as Canine; 5. Hunted and Endangered; 6. Feral Children and Tame Wolves; 7. Transcending Literature. While some nineteenth-century naturalist authors provided sympathetic perspectives—she points especially to the writing of Ernest Thompson Seton—the tipping point came later, with scientific studies of wolf culture in the 1940s and 1950s. The scientists at first helped support eradication of wolves at both federal and state levels, but gradually the investigation of wolf culture led to an emphasis on both the sociability of wolves and their environmental importance, helping to reverse the trend toward eradication. Mitts-Smith identifies Adolph Maurie's 1944 report on the wolves in Mount McKinley National Park as the beginning point; studying wolf-sheep relationships within the park, Maurie found a beneficial pattern of species control and a natural prey-predator dynamic, in contrast to hunter-rancher descriptions of the wolf as the destroyer of livestock. In 1963 National Geographic ran what Mitts-Smith calls the one of the first "pro-wolf" publications, "Wolf Versus Moose on Isle Royale," a report on another scientific study of wolf culture (indeed, the longest-running such study, began in 1958 and continuing still) (11). In 1974 the gray wolf was the first species to be listed on the Endangered Species List. And yet, as Mitts-Smith emphasizes toward the end of her book, the gray wolf's survival is far from assured, as 2008 saw its removal from the list amid ongoing calls for its eradication. Reflecting this history, wolf narrative for children has gone from demonizing the wolf to representing the wolf as a sympathetic creature—sometimes silly, sometimes noble, but almost always child-friendly.

With greater acceptance came more playful treatments of wolf behavior, wolf culture, and wolf relation to humans and other animal types. Chapters 2 and 3 showcase texts...