I picked up the book We Are Wolves by Molly Grooms when I was in the Minneapolis/Saint Paul airport. The book I have is the board book version and it has a nice puffy soft cover. I flipped through it and saw the beautiful illustrations by Lucia Guarnotta and fell in love. I am a fan of wolves and think that they are beautiful and majestic animals. Then I read the story and fell deeper in love with it, I knew I had to buy this book.

The Story
The story is about two wolf pups that learn what it is to be a wolf from their Uncle and the rest of the pack. Uncle Wolf watches over the two wolf pups for a day as he teaches them valuable lessons.

The Illustrations
I might be biased because I love wolves and how they are just so beautiful. These illustrations do seem to leap from the page an right into my heart as they are so well done. The colors and the detail are amazing.

The Message
The message of this book is what really drew me to picking it up for our kids (I bought this before Eva was even a thought on the horizon). Here is a story that shows how family nurtures each generation in their love and their lessons. Uncle Wolf takes the pups on a journey of discovery about who they are as wolves. Each lesson is reiterated at the end of the books in a series of statements about wolves. A very lovely story about what it means to be family and to have a strong identity to your past.

Final Thoughts
I love reading this book to Eva because there are four characters, Uncle Wolf, Mother Wolf, the Pups (all lines for the pups are said as one speaker) and the narrator. I can change my voice for each character and give them distinct sounds. And I like that there is a story here and plenty of things to read and not just pretty things to look at. I’m reading to my daughter to help improve her verbal skills and give her a head start in life. A well written story is going to be much better than one that is just full of pretty pictures. Luckily this book as plenty of both.