Wild Bird

July 3, 2017
Fourteen-year-old Wren knows that she’s in trouble when she awakens to a police officer hovering near her bed, but she has no idea what’s in store for her. Wren’s parents, in a desperate effort to save their daughter from a downward spiral of drug use and criminal behavior, have enrolled her in an eight-week wilderness program for at-risk youth. Whisked to Utah and dropped in the desert to join a group of teens and counselors, Wren endures a harrowing quest to find herself while battling extreme heat, limited water supplies, and rigorous hikes across the terrain. Mirroring physical pain and emotional torment as Wren recalls instances of betrayal and rejection, Van Draanen (The Secret Life of Lincoln Jones) shows how the teenager finds unexpected guidance from an elderly Paiute man, a heroin-addicted camper, and a patient counselor who teaches her how to start a fire in the wilderness, as well as within herself. Featuring evocative descriptions of landscape and psychological insight into a troubled teen, Van Draanen’s story is engrossing and inspiring. Ages 12–up. Agent: Ginger Knowlton, Curtis Brown.

June 15, 2017
In a riveting opening chapter, 14-year-old Wren is roused from sleep at 3:47 a.m., whisked to the airport, and flown to Utah for an 8-week wilderness therapy program--a last-ditch effort by her concerned parents in response to her drug use, lying, shoplifting, and destructive behavior. Initially enraged and blaming everyone, Wren slowly begins to connect with the others in the group and feel some success at mastering building a fire, purifying water, and surviving. She also contemplates her past behavior: running heroin; slashing her father's tires and her sister's clothes; carving a swastika in her mother's cherished piano. She begins to understand what real friends are--unlike those who used and mistreated her--and to consider the kind of person she wants to be. Traditional tales told by Mokov, an elderly Paiute who visits the camp, add dimension to the story, although the appropriation of Native tropes (campers go on a "quest" as a culminating exercise; Wren braids a feather in her hair in imitation of Mokov) is problematic. Wren and her family are evidently white; one of the other campers is identified as African-American. Van Draanen makes palpable both the outer desert landscape and Wren's intense inner emotions. A memorable book about family, friendship, forgiveness, and second chances. (Fiction. 12-16)

COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

August 1, 2017
Grades 8-12 Loneliness, a bad crowd, and a downward spiral led 14-year-old Wren to this: while on a midnight bender, she's dragged to the airport and shipped off. Wren's parents, concerned for both Wren's health and safety and their own, have sent her to a wilderness therapy camp. Angry and resistant, Wren has no intention of learning how to find water or build a fire, until it becomes apparent that, out here, those skills are essential. Despite herself, Wren is slowly won over by the harsh beauty of the Utah desert and by her fellow campers. The story alternates between Wren's experiences in the desert and her flashbacks to the decisionsand friendsthat led her there. Van Draanen, always versatile, frankly tackles teen drug use and recovery in a book that's less gritty, and often less bleak, than an Ellen Hopkins novel. Ultimately, everything comes together a bit neatly, but for readers who have come to root for Wrenan out-of-control girl who learns to ask for helpthat's not such a bad thing.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2018
Problem teen Wren is muscled out of her house in the dead of night and dropped at a wilderness therapy program. Building shelter, finding water, and starting fires leaves far less time for hate and anger, and readers learn Wren's dramatic backstory as she learns to survive. The plot integrates (not always successfully) traditional Paiute culture through the program's elderly Native storyteller.

(Copyright 2018 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)