Unfortunately a hunter’s trap catches the child by her foliage-like hair and a pair of baffled hunters takes her back with them to civilization. Over the years the bird teaches her to speak, the bear to eat, and the fox to play. “No one remembered how she came to the woods, but all knew it was right.” A green-haired baby smiles contentedly on a forest floor as a bear, bird, and fox look on. It is all well and good for some to find a happy medium between chaos and order but for some kids chaos is clearly MUCH more appealing! Following just one girl from her path from nature to the city and back again, it has a different lesson in mind. Tiger Goes Wild talk about the need in every child for order as well as wild uninhibited freedom. You might even argue that the BEST children’s books touch on this in some way ( Where the Wild Things Are being the most obvious example). There also exist in this world picture books that touch on this restrained/free duality. A wild, untamable creature that will emerge without fail at the worst possible moments, rendering its parents helpless and hopeless all in one swoop. Her work has been exhibited across the capital and her book Nana Shaped Like a Banana came second in the 2012 Macmillan Prize for Children’s Picture Books.There lives in every child an animal. She is inspired by Chinese cinema and illustrators such as Blair Lent and Gyo Fujikawa. Awash with colour and full of atmosphere, it offers visual treats to enchant children and indulge their wilder tendencies.Įmily Hughes was born in Hawaii, USA but lives and works in the United Kingdom. Wild is a 21st century response to Maurice Sendak’s children’s classic, Where the Wild Things Are. There’s no green here, no animals, no trees, no rivers. Now she lives in the comfort of civilisation. But will civilisation get comfortable with her? She’s puzzled by their behaviour and their insistence to live in these strange concrete structures known as ‘apartments’. That is, until she is snared by some very strange animals that look oddly like her, but they don’t talk right, eat right, or play correctly.

In Emily Hughes’ beautiful picture book we meet a little girl who has known nothing but nature from birth – she was taught to talk by birds, to eat by bears and to play by foxes – she is unashamedly, irrefutably, irrepressibly wild.

Wild book emily hughes