Be Wild, Little One

April 24, 2023
With a bouncy, joyful urgency, Hope’s debut directs readers to embrace a bold inner spirit and explore a natural world filled with enchantment and possibility. An unseen narrator invokes the titular refrain through rhyming stanzas that state how one might wring the most out of life’s experiences: “Chase tornadoes/ high and low./ Storms will come,/ but storms will go.// Run with wolves/ through mountain snow./ Be wild, little one.” Meanwhile, a child portrayed with light skin and floppy brown hair exuberantly performs variations on the narrated actions. Egnéus’s ethereal collage-style illustrations depict the child riding on a elephant’s trunk, rowing a boat above a swirl of colorful fish in the “deepest blues,” and dancing with fireflies that flash like confetti across a green sky. It’s a lively reminder of how the call of the wild can stir one’s soul. Ages 3–6.