Bea Wolf (Zach Weinersmith)

Bea Wolf

Zach Weinersmith, illustrations by Boulet
First Second Books
Fiction, MG? Fantasy/Graphic Novel/Humor/Poetry
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION:

Hey, wait! Hark now to a tale of heroes and monsters, of foam swords and green soda and tooth-rotting treats, of the ancient King Carl and the many who bore the cardboard crown after he passed into the teen-lands, and of the greatest warrior to ever raise her sugar-sticky fist against the fun-breakers and the bullies: Bea Wolf.
In the high hall of Treeheart, a magnificent stronghold of childhood wonder and hijinks, King Kai and his loyal band enjoy raucous merriment, trading jokes and telling stories and playing video games without parent-approved content... until the enraged neighbor, Mr. Grindle, can stand it no more. His mere touch instantly turns the wildest of children into a dull-eyed, dull-minded teenager, stripping them of their power and joy and ushering them into the doom of gray adulthood. All seemed lost, childhood forever ruined by the mustached monster - until an ally arrives to do battle with the fiendish foe.

REVIEW:

In this homage to the classic epic poem Beowulf, Weinersmith projects age-old concepts of mythology, heroism, loyalty, storytelling, and even the inevitability of entropy and decay of all great things onto the ultimate lost country of childhood.
Intentionally evoking the language and poetry of the original, as well as the alliteration and the dance of words, the tale relates the founding of Treeheart by the great king Carl, who - when he inevitably found the chin-whiskers and cracked voice of adolescence upon him, called for a pyre to mark his "death" and passed his crown on to future generations... knowing, even in his "afterlife" checking groceries at the supermarket, that his legend lives on. Heroes of old are evoked throughout, such as the twins who defied bedtime for seven whole days and gained wizardly powers before succumbing to sleep, and the girl whose Halloween candy haul remains unmatched. The current heir to Carl's throne, Kai, has raised the great high hall Treeheart, a place of feasting and merry-making and bedtime-defying for all brave children. But he faces a new threat: Mr. Grindle, "gloom's guardian, teacher of grief," a man who so embodies the epitome of boring, nasty, petty, cruel adulthood that he has become a monster, who only needs to lay one finger on a child to "begeezer" them, leach all their joy and imagination and magic (and there very much is magic involved in this story, which blurs the lines of reality and imagination to create a realm of epic marvels and dangers for the young and a gray, staid "afterlife" for the adults) and make them into phone-staring, rule-following young adults devoid of dreams. Treeheart technically partly overlays his property line, but it's the pure expression of childish joy and anarchy that truly drives the man into a rage, prompting him to defy the traps set to keep grown-ups out - a ladder laced with bug carapaces and boogers and other things repellent to their kind - to savage the very sacred hall itself, until no child dares set foot within. In Kai's time of need and woe, however, an ancient pact is recalled, and an ally from a distant kingdom (another suburb, up the "sliding sea" or river, from his) sends her greatest band of warriors to his aid. The chief of these warriors is the girl Bea Wolf, whose each fist holds the strength of sixty children. But is Mr. Grindle a match even for her bravery and might?
As in the original story, there is, even underneath the moments of triumph and humor, a sense of fate to both victories and defeats, as well as inevitable ending and tragedy, that even the greatest of kingdoms and mightiest of legends will inevitably fade. No child can escape adolescence forever (well, almost no child; there are a few tales mentioned in passing that hint at children who either managed to hold onto their dreams into adulthood or... did not grow up, though I may have been reading a little too much into those). Only the stories survive to inspire and inform the next heroes, passed down by young poets and bards from child to child like Carl's cardboard crown.
At the end, Weinersmith discusses the original Beowulf, the history of the surviving manuscripts, and how Bea Wolf was written to evoke the ancient epic, as well as a few pages of concept art that went into developing the idea. The art itself is worth noting, too, giving noteworthy children their own heraldic shields and creating distinct, occasionally surreal characters and monsters, matching the text in how it blurs lines between realism and fantasy.
The whole is an imaginative ode to timeless classical themes, a story that a clever child should enjoy, but which might speak also to those looking back at childhood from the other side of the teen-lands, hoping perhaps that magic and wonder and adventure yet remain somewhere in this gray and dreamless world, at least for the young.

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