The Wildest Thing
(The Wonderful Things You Will Be)

"A gorgeous guide to finding the wildness within."

"A dreamy homage that's its own budding classic."

PreS-Gr 1--In this delightful rhyming picture book, young Eleanor invites the wilderness into her home and heart. The text is lyrical and buoyant. As the story progresses, she becomes more and more wild, howling with wolves in the hallway, eating with foxes and rabbits at the kitchen table, then coloring on walls, building a makeshift den out of pillows and blankets, and leaping down the staircase. Homage is paid to Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are in several scenes and in the title. And like Sendak's In the Night Kitchen, Eleanor (pale skin, with brown hair) is naked in one scene (in the bathtub). VERDICT An excellent read-aloud for young children at home with a parent or older sibling, this book inspires a love of nature and a healthy disregard for all that is prim and proper.--Benjamin Ludwig

Copyright 2026 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Nature-based play unleashes a sense of possibility in this meditative picture book about a wilderness-lover's path to embracing the "something/ wild inside of her, // waiting to come out." After a night of dreams featuring "things with fur and fin," rhythmic text describes the way nature begins to seep into young Eleanor's routine. Breakfast occurs on a couch visualized as a large brown bear, and a moment spent quietly gives way to less constrained wishes: "She wanted to be noisy!/ She wanted to be free./ She wanted to be wilder/ than she was supposed to be." Eleanor next takes flight via monarch wings, and Winfield Martin (The Imaginaries) charts the ensuing day with alliterative verbs as well as delicate artwork that emphasizes the child's creaturely connections. (The pale-skinned figure's two dark eyes peer out from a blanket fort as a deer looks on.) Employing a mix of colored pencil, gouache, and acrylic, subtly surrealistic renderings mingle natural and human elements for an effect that gestures toward Eleanor's psychological transformation. A suitably untamed bedtime sequence winds down, yielding a thoroughly heartening portrait of a child abandoning inhibition. Ages 3-7. (Jan.)

Copyright 2025 Publishers Weekly, LLC Used with permission.