a strong-willed girl's quest to rescue her brother from kidnapping crows

I finally finished The Wildwood Chronicles by Colin Meloy. At 560 pages, it took a while,


Twelve year old Prue is the adventurous, headstrong, sarcastic main character. She is fiercely loyal to her younger brother - so much so, that when he is kidnapped by a flock of birds (did you know that a group of crows is called a 'murder'?), she heads into the Impassable Wilderness to rescue him.


What begins as a rescue mission becomes something much bigger; Wildwood is a hero's journey.


Check out the first chapter here.

First sentence: How five crows managed to lift a twenty-pound baby boy into the air was beyond Prue, but that was certainly the least of her worries.




The beautiful illustrations in this book are done by Carson Ellis (Colin Meloy is her husband... he's also the lead singer for The Decemberists... he's also the brother of Maile Meloy who is the author of The Apothecary... cool)