A story of history
I must admit, I tend to avoid children’s fiction from celebrity writers. However, Alice Roberts has considerable authority as an anthropologist and prehistorian, in addition to being a prominent TV presenter, so I though this one might be worth a read.
On the cover Alice Roberts is described as ‘a fine storyteller’, but her book is not some fictional masterwork. Rather the story that she tells is the story of history, specifically, here, that of life in the far distant Palaeolithic. What she does is to add her imagination to secure knowledge of both prehistory and parallel modern environments to bring a distant time to life. Her narrative is packed with detail and description of Early Stone Age people, of their way of life and of the landscape and nature that defined it. Indeed, sometimes the detail is rather heavily piled on. Nevertheless, she pictures the past for us and inhabits it with what feel like real flesh and blood people. However the dialogue and attitudes of her characters, particularly those of her young protagonists, can seem rather anachronistically modern. I think perhaps the author is trying to make them relatable to her young audience, and this is a creditable ambition, but it is not altogether convincing here.
Just imagine it
Wolf Road is not the book for young readers hoping for an engrossing adventure set in prehistory; for this, they would be far better to turn to Michelle Paver’s superb Wolf Brother series. Despite some dramatic incidents, and even some affecting ones, this story remains essentially a string of events held together by a seasonal journey of the nomadic hunter-gatherer tribe it features. But is is important to value it for what it is, not for what it is not. I welcome books which will ignite and stimulate children’s imagination and that is what this one could do. Those young readers who are prepared to lose themselves in life as it might have been experienced in the remote past will learn much, and may well be stimulated to further interests too.
Just picture it
It has to be said that Wolf Road is a very beautiful physical book, especially in its wonderful independent bookshop edition. Stencilled edges notwithstanding, its major attraction comes in the form of Keith Robinson’s brilliant illustrations. His charcoal drawing are just wonderfully evocative of the story’s landscape, characters and animals. They are stunningly and quite hauntingly atmospheric and I only wish there were even more of them. Their contribution to the overall book is considerable.
Better still
However, for a more convincing feel of early prehistory, combined with far finer fiction, I would unhesitatingly recommend a work from back in 1998, Peter Dickinson’s superb The Kin. Of course, we cannot know exactly how very early humans spoke, and I am neither a historian nor a specialist in ancient language, but the dialogue in The Kin, built around a simple vocabulary of immediate need, seems to me much more credible. The sweep of Peter Dickinson’s whole epic narrative is certainly more involving, emotionally and imaginatively. Sadly, The Kin is currently out of print, as is much of the work of Peter Dickinson, one of children’s literature’s finest authors*, but I am sure it could be tracked down second hand.
*Although some fine titles of his are still available on Kindle.