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Wild Bird Hardcover – 5 September 2017

by Wendelin Van Draanen (Author)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 450 ratings
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From the award-winning author of The Running Dream and Flipped comes a remarkable portrait of a girl who has hit rock bottom but begins a climb back to herself at a wilderness survival camp.

3:47 a.m. That’s when they come for Wren Clemmens. She’s hustled out of her house and into a waiting car, then a plane, and then taken on a forced march into the desert. This is what happens to kids who’ve gone so far off the rails, their parents don’t know what to do with them anymore. This is wilderness therapy camp. Eight weeks of survivalist camping in the desert. Eight weeks to turn your life around. Yeah, right.
 
The Wren who arrives in the Utah desert is angry and bitter, and blaming everyone but herself. But angry can’t put up a tent. And bitter won’t start a fire. Wren’s going to have to admit she needs help if she’s going to survive.

"I read Wild Bird in one long mesmerized gulp. Wren will break your heart—and then mend it." —Nancy Werlin, National Book Award finalist for The Rules of Survival

"Van Draanen’s Wren is real and relatable, and readers will root for her." —VOYA, starred review
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  1. Reading age
    12 years and up
  2. Print length
    320 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Grade level
    7 - 9
  5. Dimensions
    14.76 x 2.54 x 21.92 cm
  6. Publisher
    Knopf Books for Young Readers
  7. Publication date
    5 September 2017
  8. ISBN-10
    1101940441
  9. ISBN-13
    978-1101940440
  10. See all details
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Knopf Books for Young Readers (5 September 2017)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1101940441
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1101940440
  • Reading age ‏ : ‎ 12 years and up
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 14.76 x 2.54 x 21.92 cm
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 450 ratings

About the author

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Wendelin Van Draanen

Wendelin Van Draanen

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Wendelin Van Draanen ("Van Draw-nen") has written more than thirty novels for suitable for young readers to adults. She is the author of the 18-book Edgar-winning Sammy Keyes mystery series, and wrote Flipped which was named a Top 100 Children’s Novel for the 21st Century by SLJ and became a Warner Brothers feature film.

Her latest novel, The Peach Rebellion, is suitable for teens and adults. It is the story of three young women from very different backgrounds who collide, then forge a partnership that shocks their families but unites their community.

Her book for teen and adult writers, Hope in the Mail, is part writing guide, part memoir, and is designed to encourage aspiring writers to "dream big, work hard, and not give up."

Her other stand-alone titles include Wild Bird, The Secret Life of Lincoln Jones, Runaway, Confessions of a Serial Kisser, Swear to Howdy, and The Running Dream which was awarded ALA’s Schneider Family Award for its portrayal of the disability experience.

Van Draanen has also created two four-book series for younger readers. The Shredderman books--featuring a boy who deals with a bully and adapted by Nickelodeon as a TV movie--received the Christopher Award for “affirming the highest values of the human spirit,” and The Gecko & Sticky books, which are fun read-alouds, perfect for reluctant readers.

Her latest middle-grade mystery, Mr. Whiskers and the Shenanigan Sisters, is a fun adventure starring a scrappy stray dog (Mr. Whiskers) and two sisters (dubbed the Shenanigans). Van Draanen's recent picture book Gravity Is Bringing Me Down has a follow-up volume titled I Like Pi in the works. Both are STEM-based and humorous, making science learning fun for kids.

A classroom teacher for fifteen years, Van Draanen is married to Mark H. Parsons, also an author (Road Rash, The 9:09 Project). They have two sons. Find her on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter at @WendelinVanD

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Cliente Amazon
5.0 out of 5 stars Another good book by her
Reviewed in Spain on 30 April 2021
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This is the second book I read by this author and it was really good. Very interesting and original premise, at least for me. I really loved the main's character growth throughout the book. What really buged me was how oblivious the parents were and I didn't appreciate how quickly they forgave each other.
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Amy Goldsmith
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant. Haunting. Essential.
Reviewed in the United States on 9 September 2017
Verified Purchase
Filling your home to bursting with anger? Or coping with someone who does? Survival in the desert might be simpler. Rarely have I ever cared so much about a character that first made me feel so intensely uncomfortable.

Wren begins the story angry, dangerously smart, manipulative, and a sharp observer of her world, who sometimes turns observations backward to fit expectations. She is angry enough to make the pages seem like fire-starter. Seeing the world from her perspective is painful, illuminating, and impossible to put down.

She is in a personal wilderness, and soon lands in the real physical wilderness of Utah, at wilderness therapy camp. Knowing what brought her there once felt important. I loved Wren as the story closed, but wanted Wren-agade out of my head. So I’ve thought about this book for months, considering my reaction to two versions of one person.

Judging creates that difference. During her stay in the desert, a few key characters quietly accept Wren without judgement, care without conditions, and listen. They wait. Watching the result over time? Life changing for this reader.

Wren’s first step onto a long, slippery slope is being lonely, and choosing unwisely when choices are few. After that step, gravity rules, and she lands a long way from anywhere planned. That first missed step could be anyone’s. So a list of how Wren went astray is unhelpful, and invites judgement better avoided.

The multiple journeys Wren makes are interwoven—her route into personal wilderness, learning the Utah desert, coming to terms with herself, discovering her own way out—all are here, and detail makes each quite real.

This book impels one to speed. But it is also deep and intricate, revealing people in all of their subtle complexity. The story is told in small parts, with chapters of often just three concise pages. The result is remarkably beautiful.

Wild Bird has slowly trickled deep into my heart. Like water in the desert, and powerful words for personal deserts, what this book offers is vital, and worth the effort to make your own. Learn Chapter 59 by heart. It will help you avoid landing in places you never intended to go, and help you navigate.
10 people found this helpful
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bookcrazed
5.0 out of 5 stars "I'm blindfolded for what feels like an hour
Reviewed in the United States on 5 September 2017
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"I'm blindfolded for what feels like an hour, jostled around on a dirt road, breathing in dust, feeling like I'm on a sketchy version of Disneyland's Raiders of the Lost Ark ride. Like in another turn we might go crashing down a mountain. Then I remind myself. We're in the desert. The flat, ugly desert."

I recently received an ARC for Wild Bird, and I spent three hours crying, laughing, cheering, tensing up, shouting, and saying "WOW" over and over again as I read this incredibly honest, powerful, and compelling story of one teenager's journey from destruction, loneliness, and bitterness to acceptance, strength, and courage.

Wendelin Van Draanen takes her readers on an unforgettable ride through the Utah desert as Wren experiences eight weeks of survival camping in a "Desert Prison" and learns to start a fire in the wilderness and inside herself. As the story unfolds, Wren's anger, destructie behavior, and desperate cry for friendship, love, and understanding are revealed with poignant, insightful storytelling and masterful word imagery.

The path to redemption for Wren is a long and arduous adventure that every teenager and adult should experience with her as she leaves the comforts and turmoil of home behind...to venture into the unknown and come face-to-face with physical challenges and with the reality of the person she has become.

The research and attention to detail that went into describing Wren's downward spiral and her trek into the expansive Utah terrain make this an exceptional read and destined to be an award winner.

Van Draanen creates an intense, gritty, thought-provoking story that lends itself to in-depth discussion. It does not cross the line with inappropriate language, violence, or gratuitous scenes. It is a novel that will leave you breathless and satisfied atthe same time. I found myself underlining passages and re-reading paragraphs to get the full impact of the messages in them.

Wild Bird is a YA contemporary fiction masterpiece and a must read that will appeal to both teen and adult audiences. There is no doubt that it is destined to be a "Best Fiction for Young Adults" selection for 2018.
13 people found this helpful
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KW
5.0 out of 5 stars Thoughtful and insightful Great book for any age tween to adult.
Reviewed in the United States on 3 March 2023
Verified Purchase
Read this book as my grandson was assigned it in school. This book was very insightful to the pressures of teen lives and their relationships to peers and their families. Good read and life lesson found within. I definitely would recommend this book.
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CWS
4.0 out of 5 stars If it were only so. . .
Reviewed in the United States on 20 February 2024
Verified Purchase
This novel tells the story of a young woman’s experience in a program designed to help ‘straighten out’ young people who appear to be out of control and headed toward a life full of danger or jail or death. Parents who have tried everything they know to keep their kids away from drugs, gangs, crime, put their children in this type of program as a last resort. A wake-up call, so to speak.
These programs actually exist. The idea behind the program sounds good. Kids (we will call them ‘students,’) live in the desert (in this book), learning to work together on various projects. They live outdoors, sleep in sleeping bags, have a fire for warmth at night. They work together to pull a large wagon full of their supplies across the desert. There are no bathroom facilities. The water they drink and bathe in are creeks, etc. They cook their own food, continue with their education, etc. In this novel, the group of students are girls. Some of these programs segregate the boys and girls. Others do not.
Enduring a few months of living outdoors with no electronics, no smart phones, no access to the outside world may sound idyllic to some, but for most teenagers in today’s world, it is unimaginable. No e-mail, Instagram, Facebook, etc. The novel does point out that the kids get cooked food only when they have learned to make a fire with sticks - not so easy to do. Otherwise, their meals consist of uncooked rice, for instance.
The novel fails to acknowledge that because this is a program of last resort that the parents have chosen out of desperation, it is not a summer camp. The students attending may have been alcoholics, or on serious drugs, or in gangs, or extremely anti-social, or violent. They can be insensitive, downright mean, unfriendly, hostile, and even dangerous to the other students. They are unhappy, furious at having been sent there. They are angry and can be in a rage. Especially boys. And when the students experience rage, they often take it out on the other students. Staff, often not much older than the students, are there to make sure that does not happen. They don’t always catch the behavior in time. They may not believe a student who says they are hurt or in pain - assuming the student is lying to get out of doing something. Also, the staff often react to the behavior of the students by coming down hard, sometimes with violent behavior themselves, to protect themselves at the very least.
So while the “boot camp” idea may sound appealing to some parents who are at their wits’ end and desperate to protect their children, the program may not be exactly what the parent hopes it to be.
I’ve talked to some kids who were sent to this type of program (and their parents) who were devastated to think their parents would send them there. What a parent does when they are so desperate, I don’t know. But whatever program is chosen should be well researched which is easier in this day and time with the internet.
One person found this helpful
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