"Wyatt the Worrier" rebrands himself as "Wyatt the Wild" in this exhilarating middle-grade adventure featuring an 11-year-old who survives grizzly bear attacks, mudslides, and other life-threatening situations, all during a painful family restructure after his parents' divorce.
Wyatt loves "math, machines, and predictability." But life is low-tech and unconventional at the off-grid Montana wildlife-rescue ranch his father runs with his fiancée, Iris, and her outdoorsy son, 12-year-old Emmett. When Wyatt visits for summer break, he connects with Goldie, an injured wolf pup on the ranch that needs antibiotic shots before she can be rewilded. Wyatt, the only human the skittish pup trusts, comes to a conclusion based on Goldie: to "join a pack, you have to be a wolf. You have to be wild. If I want to fit in here... I can't be, well, me." When Goldie escapes before she has healed, Wyatt's desire to appear courageous and his concern for the young wolf lead him to become stranded in the wilderness with Emmett. As Wyatt and Emmett face one perilous situation after another, Wyatt questions what it even means to be courageous.
As in his earlier middle-grade novel, Rare Birds, Jeff Miller offers a funny, likable, vulnerable protagonist who finds agency during harrowing life struggles. In addition to Wyatt's first-person narrative, Miller includes occasional italicized chapters from Goldie's point of view, describing her own experience and how she perceives "Soft Paw," or Wyatt, as a kindred lonely spirit. Wyatt the Wild unites thrilling action with emotional growth and should resonate with fans of Dan Gemeinhart and Kate DiCamillo. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor