This Is the Path the Wolf Took by Laura Farina (review)

When reading to his little sister, Gabriel replaces worrying bits with a self-insert knight, Sir Gabriel, who saves the day before there is a day to be saved—much to his perceptive sister's annoyance ("That's not how Daddy reads it"). The wolf of Gabriel's story, who should eat grandmas and blow down pig houses, actually eats ice cream with grandma and is scared off before he can do any harm ("But what about, 'Grandma, what big teeth you have'?" "They have normal teeth. They use them to eat ice cream"). Gabriel attempts to entice his increasingly distracted sister with a dragon, who is also scared off, before conceding that his stories are boring and introducing real plot tension by horroring up the wolf with "teeth … the size of T. rex teeth—if T. rex teeth were the size of mountains." Ellis' digital illustrations are naïve and playful, in a predominantly calming, sweetly hued palette of the woods, in which movement is shown along the paths through speech bubbles as the characters traverse them. This book is funny and touching in the right places, and though Gabriel may be an insufferable storyteller, it's apparent that he's a good older brother.