Picture books are growing up.  They are no longer just for “learn-to-readers”.  Over the last few years more and more books have been appearing which match older primary and teenage stories with exciting and challenging artwork.

The Wolves in the Walls is one of these and it is excellent.  In a clever mix of night fears, humour and dark fairy tale, Neil Gaiman tells of Lucy who hears “sneaking, creeping, crimpling noises” coming from inside the walls of her house.  She knows that there are wolves in there “plotting their wolfish plots, hatching their wolfish schemes”.  But no one in her family believes her, until the wolves come out!

The family are left to huddle at the bottom of the garden while the wolves take over the house, eating and partying and wrecking.  It is left to Lucy and her pig-puppet to find the family’s way back home.

While there are plenty of humorous bits, this is a real horror story, scary and tense, not just a light joke around the ideas.  It just itches to be read aloud in a dramatic and moody way.  Gaigan builds the suspense as we, and Lucy, can see what the family will not.  And then the action explodes onto the page!

Dave McKean’s illustrations are perfect.  They use different styles for different characters and situations – sometimes dark and confronting, and then furious action and chaos.  He uses the words of the text as part of the whole mood of the pictures, changing sizes and shapes, drawing the reader on through the action. 

In the end, Lucy’s solution is a clever twist in the tale, though not enough to prevent severe jam damage to Dad’s second-best tuba.

The Wolves in the Walls is a brilliant picture book, with a wonderful matching of text and illustrations.  It certainly shows that picture books are not just for little kids.

Review by David Beagley

© 2003 David Beagley