Wild by Sam Usher

Sam Usher’s Wild is an adventure of extraordinary proportions that seems to lead us, and grandson and Grandad to a legendary history of cat. What’s more there are other cats there, too. Then we have to journey through extreme territory, following the cat that leaps from Grandad’s kitchen window.

It is meant to be a looking after the cat day. Despite Grandad’s warnings that cats only do what they want to do, the boy tries to engage with her. Thereafter, he sets up games and tries to entice her to play. When he determines that she doesn’t like him, Grandad tries to encourage him, that it’s not the boy, but the cat. Therefore, the boy wonders if she’s hungry, or maybe whether she’d like to nap before the fire. However, she has other plans…

Sam Usher leads us into wonderful possibilities. The way he sequences the pictures so that we see each step of the day, the keen efforts to entice the cat’s attention. However, at the point the cat, leaps, we hear the clatter of the spilled kitchen sink, and thereafter, wait, through as the boy implores his grandfather, ‘The cat’s escaped’.

Where she leads them to, the travails of their journey, is rich with magnificence, danger, colour, history and magic. We love the colours, towering shapes, peeping eyes and superb imagination.

Bookwagon loves and recommends Wild, alongside Sam Usher’s seasonal  picture books, and Free. This title fulfils so many readers in so many ways, and demands to be read, pored over and loved.