SuitabookWolf
Gillian Cross
- Reading
- Read alongside the young person if suspense or family secrecy may feel intense. Pause after major revelations to discuss what is known, what remains uncertain, and how the wolf symbol is being used.
- Themes
- Fear and the wolf image: Cassy experiences nightmares in which Red Riding Hood is reshaped by her fears, while a wolf project and the father’s actions give the image several possible meanings. The wolf appears to function as more than a literal subject: it connects danger, imagination and competing interpretations of threat.
- Secrecy, family and responsibility: Cassy’s grandmother and mother keep silent about her absent father until she discovers that he is involved in terrorism. The book’s stance on this remains unclear.
- Creativity and stereotypes: Cassy’s mother’s household earns a living through school programmes combining fact, fiction, drama and story, including work about wolves. The programmes are presented as tools intended to challenge stereotypes and encourage original thinking, though their effect on Cassy and others is only partly described.
- Worth knowing
- Be ready for family disruption, squatting or squalid living conditions, nightmares and terrorism involving a parent. The treatment appears serious and consequential; the full intensity, detail and ending are not clear here.