Good Little Wolf

For her debut, Shireen borrows some familiar characters—the toothy wolf, the home-owning pig, the sweet-tempered grandmother—making her story a bit like a party where you already know most of the guests. Wide-eyed Rolf, the good little wolf of the title, eats his vegetables and is always nice to his friends, but he can’t howl properly or blow his friend Little Pig’s house down. When a Big Bad Wolf threatens his elderly friend Mrs. Boggins (who looks like she just wandered in from South Park), “something quite strange came over Rolf. He felt an unfamiliar, wild feeling growing inside him.” In a droll parody of the classic werewolf transformation, wide-eyed, stumpy Rolf becomes a monster with fangs and claws, foiling the Big Bad Wolf in a particularly satisfying way. Shireen’s tight pacing and economical prose push the story forward, and her words and pictures play smartly off each other. The sinister twist ending comes out of the blue, proving that Good Little Wolves are indeed a rare breed—there’s one less of them around after the last page is turned. Ages 4–8 (Sept.)