The Silenced Howl: How Children’s Literature Contributed to the Near-Extinction of the Wolf and How it Evolved to Save It
By Tori Leigh Kelley
“Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf? Tra-la-la-la-la-a-a-a!”
Banta, et al., (14).
Mary Quattlebaum’s lecture, Depicting Animals “Realistically” in Children’s Fiction and Nonfiction: An Exploration, warns us to avoid stereotypes such as “cute” or “evil” when writing about animals and to “move beyond overreliance on certain animals.” Children’s literature is highly populated with heartfelt stories about dogs and cats. You’d be hard-pressed to find a single story on the endangered hellbender, though, also known as a snot otter. Nobody seems interested in telling their story. Mary suggests that authors look a little deeper when choosing their subject matter.
What happens when authors choose to write about a single species? Worse, what happens when storytellers vilify a single species? The answer—near extinction. “Gray wolves are a keystone species […] that has a very large effect on its ecosystem because of what it eats” (23).
According to Saxena in Saving the Endangered Gray Wolf, “Gray wolves used to live all over North America and throughout Europe and Asia” (17). But in the 1970’s “only five wild Mexican gray wolves [were left]” (21). The absence of wolves led to an overpopulation of elk, which is the main food source for wolves. The numerous elk, decreased plant diversity which led to a loss of birds and beavers which effected the water systems and land formations as well as other animals. In short, the loss of one species caused a terrible detriment to the entire ecosystem. Can we really blame children’s stories for this phenomena? I say, yes! In the same way that a rumor can ruin the reputation of an innocent person. Stories have power.
Tehrani, in The Phylogeny of Little Red Riding Hood, examined worldwide accounts dating back pre-Grimm brothers (1812-1814) of this popular folktale told in different oral and written variations with one cohesive focus—a targeted animal. In China, Japan, Korea and other parts of East Asia, the folktales featured an evil tiger, which is also critically endangered, and in the Middle East and Europe, the story featured a wolf. In all of these stories, the “villainous” animals eat the children.
From the origins of our farming days, wolves have been painted as villains to our cattle and our children. In Once a Wolf: How Wildlife Biologists Fought to Bring Back the Gray Wolf Swinburne writes that “In 5000 B.C., the earliest farmers of Asia killed wolves” (5). It’s true that wolves occasionally kill cattle, but wolves only kill to eat. Humans are not their target. Wolves are documented by both Swinburne and Saxena as serving to keep their food source species strong and healthy by only preying on the weak. But as far back as 600 B.C., Swinburne states that “Aesop […] wrote many stories that painted the wolf as a cunning and greedy beast” (5). In The Wolf and the Shepherd, Aesop depicts a wolf as tricking the shepherd to leave his sheep in his care so he can eat them. In reality, if a wolf is hungry, one single sheep would make a satisfying meal. But the shepherd, upon finding his sheep “killed and carried off” says, “…how foolish it was to trust a wolf…” This sets up the literary idea that wolves are tricky and manipulative when in fact, they are just animals following regular animal instincts to hunt and eat when they are hungry—no different from any other animal. Cats do this all the time, but we don’t have a mass volume of stories about evil cats…well, not to the point that we are directed (even indirectly) to slaughter all the cats. In literature, when cats are evil or tricky, readers gobble this up as cute, evidenced by the many popular volumes of Bad Kitty, Splat the Cat and Pete the Cat among others. Personally, I revere my own kitty as a fierce huntress when she catches her own breakfast. I never once consider her a tricky, evil beast that needs to be wiped off the face of earth. Yet this is exactly what happened to wolves as messages of “kill the beast” were passed down as cautionary tales.
The Brothers Grimm wrote Little Red Cap in which we see “a sweet little girl beloved by everyone” (1) who then ventures into the forest and finds a wolf when she makes the choice to wander off the path. “Little Red Cap didn’t know what a bad animal he was and she was not afraid of him” (3). She wasn’t afraid because children aren’t born with hatred inside them—that has to be taught. “Europeans […] brought their hatred of wolves to this continent” (Swinburne p. 6). They brought and evolved this story of Little Red Cap into Little Red Riding Hood, translating it into many languages. As the story unfolds, the wolf is anthropomorphized into a sly beast, standing on two legs. “The wolf thought to himself, This tender young thing is a tasty morsel…” Wolves do not think of humans as “tasty morsels,” but here the Brothers Grimm successfully make death by wolf a feared possibility to humans, justifying their killing of this important animal to save a few sheep or cattle each year.
In a National Geographic Magazine article, Prairie Divide, Nordhaus reports “wolves […] saw similar declines as settlements spread west. The migrants slaughtered wildlife for cash and sport, built fences that fractured the animals’ habitat” (75). Within the article, restoration ecologist, Daniel Kinka states, “The constraint on wildlife populations is not what the habitat will support. But what humans will support” (77). This is sadly true. Wolves are not a threat to humans or their habitats. As a keystone species, they are a necessary element. The harsh reality is that humans are the true threat to the wolves and our shared environment. Saxena reports, “In 1926, the last two wolves in Yellowstone were killed by park rangers” (23).
In Little Red Cap, the girl arrives at Granny’s house and is tricked by the wolf wearing her grandmother’s clothing. Until finally, he gobbles her down. This is what Quattlebaum’s lecture warns against, anthropomorphizing an animal as evil incarnate. I’m quite sure that in the history of wolves, none have ever tricked a human by any means, especially by donning a costume. But the story of Little Red Riding Hood has been coded into generations of DNA to the point that humans have caused the mass slaughter of these innocent animals who were simply living their natural lives when in reality, wolves run away when they see humans. I have personally come upon coyotes, who follow many similar behaviors as wolves, in my own woods, and they always run before I can get a good look at them. Yet, the hunter in Little Red Cap, resolves to hunt the wolf and is painted as the hero when he is passing by and hears the wolf snoring inside grandmother’s house. “Here you are, you old sinner” (17). Sinner? Seriously?
If Little Red Riding Hood and The Wolf and the Shepherd weren’t bad enough, more stories about “evil” wolves followed. The Three Little Pigs, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, and The Gingerbread Man all of which depicted a wicked wolf whose singular aim was to eat the main character of the story through trickery, persistence, and force. Yet it was humans who continued to trick, persist, and force wolves out of their native lands and kill them. “Hunters poisoned elk carcasses and left them out for the wolves to eat” (Saxena p. 23).
Welch says it best. “Humans are a narcissistic breed. Throughout history we’ve vacillated between seeing animals through the lens of our own behavior and refusing to accept that we’re anything alike. […] We anthropomorphize or insist on our own uniqueness. Neither, of course, is entirely correct.” (50). Animals take what they need to survive. Humans take what they need and then some.
In the Boy Who Cried Wolf, the shepherd boy is bored tending to his quiet sheep all day, so he amuses himself by crying wolf. The townsfolk come running with pitchforks. In different versions of this tale, the boy is finally ignored for his lying and the wolf eats him and his sheep. The intended message in the story is, Don’t lie or no one will believe you. But the larger environmental message is that wolves are bad and will eat you when you let your guard down. The Boy Who Cried Wolf is one more story that adds to the negative feelings about wolves and makes a case for hunting them.
If we flip the stories it’s evident that cunning humans are the ones who need to make amends. With so much children’s literature calling for the killing of wolves and their dropping numbers in the wild, perhaps some authors recognized the imbalance and took action. Without interviewing them, it’s impossible to know motives, but there has been an increase of stories that illustrate the inner lives of wolves both in fiction and nonfiction. We fear what we don’t know or understand. By getting to know our neighbors, we can we love them instead of fear them.
In the 2002 parody of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, Hartman writes about The Wolf Who Cried Boy. The wolf family is a close unit with a traditional family structure, father, mother and son. The young wolf wants to eat something different for dinner, he’s tired of the same old things. He wants to eat a boy and has his parents support who say they will help him catch the boy if he spies one. Well, he doesn’t, but he learns that if he lies and says there is a boy he can put off eating boring dinners and have yummy snacks instead. But when a boy scout troop hikes near the wolf den, the young wolf is no longer believed by his parents when he cries “Boy!” The young wolf doesn’t get to eat any boys and learns not to lie. In this version, young readers see a boy get away with sticking its tongue at the young wolf. I’m not sure this story helps the plot of the wolf much, but at least the whole wolf pack gets to live, so maybe that’s the positive advance children’s literature gains from this text. It also puts some power in the hands of the trickster boy when faced with a wolf, making a traditionally feared animal less scary.
Jon Scieszka in 1989 wrote The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs! By A. Wolf, one year before the nonfiction title Once a Wolf: How Wildlife Biologists Fought to Bring Back the Gray Wolf which documented what a bad reputation wolves held and how critically endangered they are. It’s unknown whether Scieszka’s story motivation was to help the wolves flip their image or if he simply wrote it whimsically. Either way, it’s an important account because it’s told from the wolf’s perspective, causing readers to consider that maybe there is more than one side to every story. It’s compelling to think that the wolf was merely trying to borrow a cup of sugar to make a cake for his grandma and that he had a cold which is what caused the huffing and puffing. Wolves are pack animals and are documented to take excellent care of their families with a social hierarchy built on positions earned by their behaviors within their community and affection. When Mr. Wolf arrives at the pigs’ homes and believes them to be dead anyway so he might as well eat, a new narrative is created—a practical wolf who doesn’t waste. These are all admirable traits and leaves our young reader to consider another, more positive opinion of the wolf, who simply got a bad rap because of a misunderstanding.
Judy Sierra provides another opportunity to see the wolf as an equal and upstanding member of the children’s book community in Mind Your Manners, B.B. Wolf. When he’s invited to a tea party among other popular book characters, his friend the crocodile says, “You’ll have to behave yourself” (11). They read an etiquette book. All through the story, the wolf remembers his manners by singing a song he made up. He doesn’t eat a single character and excuses himself when he burps. Miss Wonderly, who is a human character and is set up as highest in the power dynamic of the story, offers B.B. Wolf a gingerbread cookie at the tea party, but he declines. “I could never bite a cute little Gingerbread boy.” Miss Wonderly replies, “You are so kind and sensitive. Storybooks don’t do you justice” (30). It seems humans are trying to rectify their old “evil” painting of Mr. Wolf through this story that shows a conscientious wolf character. But the danger of this story is in the anthropomorphizing of a wolf, which as Quattlebaum warned against, has been overdone, to the point of creating a murderous hatred of wolves in children’s literature while young readers are still formulating their opinions about the natural world. How can children’s literature reverse years of messages that a wolf is big, bad, and scary?
The hilarious graphic novel series, The Bad Guys, by Aaron Blabey, shows Mr. Wolf as a sympathetic main character, “You’re thinking, “Ooooooh, it’s a big, bad, scary wolf! I don’t want to talk to him! He’s a monster” (5). But stay with Mr. Wolf and you’ll see his attempt to recover his negative past with his current good deeds. Blabey shows us the rap sheets of notoriously bad characters, including Mr. Wolf, Mr. Snake, Mr. Piranha, and Mr. Shark—all animals that have been anthropomorphized into “evil” villains in stories since the beginning of time. But Mr. Wolf wants to change all that. He wants to be seen as a hero. He creates the Good Guys Club. Even though some of their efforts are misguided, their intentions are good—at least Mr. Wolf’s are—and he works his way into our hearts with how badly he wants to change and be seen as good. “Today is the first day of our new lives. We are not Bad Guys anymore. We’re Good Guys! And we are going to make the world a better place” (136). Blabey does much to turn the negative image of the “evil” wolf into a fun, sweet, and lovable character. My family eagerly awaits each new edition of this series. It is my hope that it pushes the scales more toward a sympathetic wolf than a villainous one and repairs some of the damage caused by the classic wolf tales in children’s literature. I wonder why Scholastic went with the title The Bad Guys stamped in bold letters above the characters’ heads instead of The Good Guys. Labels are so important in the branding of creatures. It would have been more powerful and environmentally important to see The Good Guys stamped over animals like wolves, snakes, sharks, and piranhas, that have a history of inspiring fear. After all, they’re just living their best lives like the rest of us.
In A Wolf Called Wander, Rosanne Parry weaves a tale based on the true story of wolf OR-7 who traveled over a thousand miles to find a mate and start his own wolf pack. No wolf had been seen in this area in seventy years. Scientists tracked OR-7 with a radio collar and documented five litters of pups born to this family. It was a very important event in the repopulation of wolves. Because of the actual data gathered from the radio collar, Parry was able to create a story of a wolf being a wolf. No anthropomorphizing, no clothes, no trickery. Just an honest, though fictional, account of the noble life of a wolf in his natural habitat. It’s important to note that OR-7 journeyed past sheep ranches and cattle and did not kill a single one. Though it seems like a single kill here and there should be allowed and expected among smart ranchers in the same way as you have to overplant vegetables for the nibbling of rabbits. It’s all part of being a member in an ecosystem. Sharing is required.
Perhaps the most admirable trait of the wolf is its loyalty to its pack. Wolves mate for life. The story wolf, Wander, yearns for a family of his own when his is separated by a fictional wolf territory fight. “I am hungry for companionship like I have never been hungry for meat” (191). Parry’s story emphasizes the deep connective relationships wolves form, completely opposite from the lone wolf stories seen in classic literature. Parry’s tale is based on scientific data, OR-7 did travel a long way to find a mate and form a family. The story wolf wet-marks his territory, protecting it and creating his home boundary. “This mark says, MINE. Mine for living. Mine for hunting. Mine until you kill me to take it away” (194). OR-7 remains loyal to his mate, breeding together precious pups that will regrow the wolf species. Parry’s Wander sees his pups born. “…my nose tells me they are mine. Ours. A pack of our own” (208).
Around the globe, wolves were hunted almost to the point of extinction. This phenomenon was perpetuated through children’s stories. In a way, the round up and slaughter of wolves was much like the round up and slaughter of Jews during the Holocaust. Negative messages were spread by authority figures and people reacted. As writers, we create the messages—the big bad wolf—the wolves paid a terrible price. We need more stories like Parry’s that seek to educate based on facts to combat the damage children’s literature has perpetuated on the wolf species. We need stories that are honest and inspiring versus stories that serve the human agenda of MINE!
Children’s literature is powerful. Stories shape our beliefs, thoughts, and actions with the potential to vilify an animal to the point of extinction. This is why it’s important to heed Mary Quattlebaum’s lecture, Depicting Animals “Realistically” in Fiction and Nonfiction: An Exploration and not stereotype an animal as being evil or cute. The big bad wolf has become an overused stereotype that nearly caused the extinction of a species that cares for its young, has a social hierarchy, and unquestionable affection and loyalty for its pack. Writers should be careful not to abuse their power of the pen in presenting misleading depictions of our neighboring species. While it may be impossible to understand any animal completely, we would be wise to try, erroring on the side of acceptance and admiration. Each organism, no matter the size, plays an important role in the balance of our ecosystem. Let’s use our words carefully to maintain this balance for generations to come.
Works Cited
Banta, Milt, et al. The Three Little Pigs. First Random House ed., Golden Books, an Imprint of
Random House Children’s Books, 2004.
Blabey, Aaron. The Bad Guys : Book 1. Scholastic, 2017.
Grimm, Jacob, and Lisbeth Zwerger. Little Red Cap. First Noth-South Books, 1995.
Hartman, Bob, and Tim Raglin. The Wolf Who Cried Boy. Puffin Books, 2004.
Hennessy, B. G, and Brois Kulikov. The Boy Who Cried Wolf. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2006.
Nolte, Nancy, and Richard Scarry. The Gingerbread Man. 1st Random House ed., Golden
Books, 2004.
Nordhaus, Hannah. “Prairie Divide.” National Geographic, Last Journey Into Slavery, February
2020, pp. 68-89.
Parry, Rosanne, and Monica Armino. A Wolf Called Wander. First U.S. paperback [edition] ed.,
Greenwillow Books, an Imprint of HarperCollins, 2020.
Quattlebaum, Mary. lecture, Depicting Animals “Realistically” in Fiction and Nonfiction: An
Exploration. VCFA Commons. Accessed on May 8, 2021.
Saxena, Shalini. Saving the Endangered Gray Wolf. First edition ed., Britannica Educational
Publishing in Association with Rosen Educational Services, 2016.
Scieszka, Jon, and Lane Smith. The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs. Penguin, 1996.
Sierra, Judy, and J.otto Seibold. Mind Your Manners, B.b. Wolf. 1st ed., Knopf, 2007.
Swinburne, Stephen R, and Jim Brandenburg. Once a Wolf: How Wildlife Biologists Fought to
Bring Back the Gray Wolf. Houghton Mifflin, 2009.
Tehrani JJ. “The Phylogeny of Little Red Riding Hood.” Plos One, vol. 8, no. 11, 2013, p.
78871., doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0078871.
Welch, Craig. “Secrets of the Whales.” National Geographic, The Ocean Issue, May 2021, pp.
43-79.
Zemach, Margot, and Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. The Three Little Pigs: An Old Story. Sunburst
ed., Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1996.
Hennessy, B.G. The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2006.
CT Archive Paragraph
Gac, Adam. Human After All – Psychological Development in Robot Characters. Advisor: Amy King, Summer/Fall 2018.
This CT opens with the purpose of the essay, then uses a source to explain the definition of that purpose. Next comes another source on how to build their purpose, then a shift to spend time on development and theory. Once a thorough presentation of the development and theory are laid out, Gac details two practical examples which demonstrate that theory in literature. The conclusion wraps up his ideas with reference to his sources and leaves something new for the reader to consider.
