The Wolves of Yellowstone by Catherine Barr, illustrated by Jenni Desmond

I picked this up because I recognized the illustrator, who has done a number of really beautiful nonfiction and informational picture books. This falls more on the side of nonfiction, with Desmond showing her artistic range alongside Barr's prose, which changes from brief sentences to paragraphs expanded on the context and history of the story.

The endpages and title page are flecked with gray drips against the white background, the footprints of deer, and the running figure of a dark wolf, creating the feeling of a wolf running through the snow. The first page is a charcoal night sky with a wolf's yellow eyes peering out above the title and an introduction to wolves that begins "The wolf is admired and feared in equal measure."

Throughout the pages, Desmond varies her style from the increasingly barren wilderness, eaten away by uncontrolled herds with no wolves to hunt them, to faceless scientists beginning the reintroduction project, and back to the original image of a wolf running. This time it's packs of wolves, running across the landscape, through the winter, the snow, the night, and the spring. With the wolves peering from bushes and relaxing in the lush grass, the balance returns and with it a lush, green spring. Barr expands to talk about the plants and animals that return with the wolves and their individual cycles, from beavers and plants to beetles and bears. Barr looks at other examples of rewilding and the effects of keystone species and predators, tells what happened to each of the original wolves, beautifully drawn by Desmond, and finishes with a thoughtful reflection on rewilding, against the same white background with gray flecks that we saw at the beginning - but now the wolf stands and howls, its tracks replacing those of the deer, and there are sprigs of grass popping up through the snow.

Verdict: This isn't a narrative nonfiction title you'd read straight through to a storytime audience, but each page is crafted like an individual vignette of a larger story with interesting facts, brief narratives, and reflections on conservation and rewilding and the complexities of reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone.

ISBN: 9781547607983; Published April 2022 by Bloomsbury; Borrowed from another library in my consortium; Added to the order list