The Children and the Wolves
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Printz Honor-winning author Adam Rapp spins a raw, gripping, and ultimately redemptive story about three disaffected teens and a kidnapped child. Three teenagers - a sharp, well-to-do girl named Bounce and two struggling boys named Wiggins and Orange - are holding a four-yearold girl hostage in Orange's basement. The little girl answers to "the Frog" and seems content to play a video game about wolves all day long, a game that parallels the reality around her. As the stakes grow higher and the guilt and tension mount, Wiggins cracks and finally brings Frog to a trusted adult. Not for the faint of heart, Adam Rapp's powerful, mesmerizing narrative ventures deep into psychological territory that few dare to visit.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Writing in the visceral narrative style readers have come to expect from him, Rapp (Punkzilla) plunges readers into the minds of three emotionally disturbed teens and the four-year-old girl they have kidnapped and keep chained up in a basement. The driving force behind the trio's actions is intelligent and cold-blooded 14-year-old Bounce, who tests the limits of her power by manipulating insecure Wiggins and violent Orange into being her pawns, "my perfect little monkey boys," feeding them prescription drugs, toying with them sexually, and making them fight each other. The three collect donations for the girl's disappearance with the aim of buying a Glock to kill an elderly poet. Only Wiggins's struggling conscience stands in the way of Bounce's bloodlust. Bigotry, neglect, violence, and desensitization to all of the above intermingle in a story that's particularly devoid of hope, even for Rapp. Even four-year-old Frog seems beyond salvation, as she obsessively plays a violent video game that isn't any more disturbing than what's going on in the rest of the book. It's an unrelentingly bleak indictment of a world far gone, where the best perhaps only option is to abandon society altogether. Ages 14 up.