Category Archives: A Wolf Called Wander

A new baby orca in the Salish Sea

It’s been a busy two weeks since A Whale of the Wild splashed down in bookstores on Sept 1st. Wildfires have occupied most of my attention this last week but I prefer to focus on much happier news. For example, there is a new baby orca in the Salish Sea! You can read all about it on the Center for Whale Research website. The photo below is by Katie Jones who helped me vet A Whale of the Wild.

Last Thursday I got to spend an evening with one of my favorite writers Janet Fox on the Books in Common NW writers series. We had a lovely chat about my book and hers, The Artifact Hunters. It was great fun and you can catch the whole conversation here. It starts a little slow because we are waiting for folks to join the zoom, so skip ahead a minute if you like.

I had hoped to create some science videos in my backyard here in Oregon this month as a supplement to school visits, but at the moment my back yard has the most unhealthy air in the entire world because of wildfire smoke, so I’ll be postponing that for now. Fortunately I haven’t had to evacuate yet and I’m grateful for all the help and prayers that people are sending.

If you are looking for a way to support people in my state, the Oregon Food Bank is going to have 40,000 extra folks to feed this month, so a donation there would be very welcome. If you are looking for more literature-specific aid, the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (BINC) gives direct aid to displaced booksellers and burned or shuttered book shops.

Thank you!

On Losing a Book Tour

My commute today is a few dozen steps to the corner of the yard where my tiny studio is waiting for me as it has every day for the past ten years. Today was going to be the start of a publisher sponsored book tour, my very first in more than 20 years as a working writer. It would have been in support of the paperback release of A Wolf Called Wander. I would have traveled across the country and met and been inspired by thousands of students and their wonderful teachers and librarians. I would have made new indie bookseller friends and seen cities I’ve never visited and had new and interesting research opportunities. And I would have sold hundreds of books. Now, because of the pandemic, that opportunity is gone and nothing will bring it back.

And I am feeling such gratitude! First, and most importantly, I’m grateful to all the school boards and superintendents who made the call to close schools and protect the families they serve. I’m in awe of the energy they’ve thrown into educating their students at home. I’m intensely proud of my fellow booksellers who have sacrificed income in favor of the safety of their shop patrons–many of whom are the grandmas and grandpas of my readers. Special cheers to those who are scrambling to make books available to their communities via mail and delivery and ebooks and downloadable audio. I’m thankful that my publisher HarperCollins has valued my safety over their profits and not even asked me to do something that would put myself and my family at risk. I’m grateful to have a roof over my head and my family at my side in these heart-rending times. I’m thankful to be able to stay in and do what I can to protect those for whom staying at home is not possible. I’m grateful for the vast majority of Americans who understand the importance of elective quarantine and hand hygiene.

One thing I came to appreciate in researching A Wolf Called Wander and it’s companion A Whale of the Wild, is that humans are pack animals too. And we are being hunted by a microscopic creature, weak out in the air, but intensely powerful once it breaks the fortress of our lungs. Thousands of our fellow pack members have fallen prey to it. Even so the human pack has the upper hand. Because a virus can’t run. It can’t even crawl. It can only get from one human to the next if a human carries it. And so I’m sending up a howl of solidarity to my fellow pack members, today and everyday, until victory is ours. I will do everything in my power to starve our predator and I will trust my fellow humans to chose life over profit and do the same.

For Wolf Fans

If you are studying at home and love wolves, here’s some bonus content for middle grade students who liked A Wolf Called Wander.

Here are the resources I referenced in the video. If you are looking for information about animals of the world, national geographic has a terrific website for kids. For information about Oregon animals and habitats try the Oregon Dept of Fish and Wildlife.

If you want to look at some wolves and track their behavior like a wildlife biologist does, you could follow this link to the Wolf Conservation Center in New York where they have some wolves you can watch on wildlife cameras. bit.ly/34ulJH4 will take you there.

If you just want to practice drawing a wolf, here is one of illustrator Mónica Armiño’s pictures for practice and inspiration.

And finally if you want to write me a letter, you can reach me at the bookstore where I work: Annie Blooms Books, 3834 SW Capitol Hwy, Portland, Oregon 97219. I promise I’ll write back and send you a signed bookplate.

Farewell to OR 7

It’s with sorrow and also great pride that I bid farewell to a wild wolf who captured the hearts of wildlife watchers everywhere with his strength and determination, and inspired me to write A WOLF CALLED WANDER. When OR 7 was a pup in the Imnaha Pack in northeastern Oregon, wolves were only recently returned to my home state, and we had much to learn about wild wolves and many questions about how they would survive. When OR 7 dispersed from his pack in search of a mate he fired the imagination of the world with his persistence–eventually finding a wolf in southwestern Oregon where none had been seen in more than 80 years.

This is OR 7 captured on a trail camera in 2014.

He and his mate founded the Rogue pack. (Sorry to disappoint Star Wars fans, it was named for the Rogue River watershed where they live.) The pair went on to have pups year after year. Those pups are founding members of California’s first wild wolves in more than a century, the Lassen and Shasta packs. OR 7 has not worn a collar in several years and was last seen on a trail camera in the fall of 2019. His mate has been seen on trail cameras this spring but not OR 7 so he is missing and presumed dead at this point. He was 11 years old, more than twice the average life span for a wild wolf. His Rogue pack continues to thrive and his pups and grand-pups will raise their voices in Oregon’s forests for generations to come.

There is plenty to celebrate about the progress wolves have made in OR 7’s lifetime. Wolves have slowly but steadily increased over the last decade. There are now 22 known packs in Oregon and the known population of wolves has increased 15% in the last year. In response the Department of Fish and Wildlife has hired more wolf biologists and concentrated grant money and public education toward the goal of managing livestock to co-exist with wolves. Those efforts are paying off as there are 43% fewer losses of livestock in 2019. Here is a link to a wolf encounter with an ODFW intern in the summer of 2019. It has good information about meeting wolves in the wild. I hope our future contains many more beautiful and peaceful wolf encounters like this one.

Farewell OR 7, you will live in our hearts and in our stories always. art by Mónica Armiño from A Wolf Called Wander

Sources: https://dfw.state.or.us/wolves/docs/oregon_wolf_program/2019_Annual_Wolf_Report_FINAL.pdf, and https://www.opb.org/news/article/oregon-wolf-population-up-but-famous-or-7-may-have-died/

New Book News!

I’m thrilled to announce that I have a companion book to A Wolf Called Wander coming out next year. A Whale of the Wild will be a fall title with Greenwillow. The illustrator will be Lindsay Moore who wrote and illustrated the magnificent picture book The Sea Bear. Here we are researching by kayak in the Salish Sea. You can read all about the deal in this Publisher’s Weekly interview.

I am very grateful to the team at Andersen Press who had such vision for my book, and to our brilliant illustrator Mónica Armiño and to Greenwillow who have made a beautiful home for my stories. And most of all I’m grateful to my Portland writing community, my writing partners Amy Baskin, Nora Ericson, Michael Gettle-Gilmartin, Cheryl Coupé, Barb Liles and Cliff Lehman. And most of all thank you to my agent Fiona Kenshole for her acumen, determination, enthusiasm and kindness.

Rosanne Parry and Lindsay Moore in a sea kayak.