Bea Wolf
Zach Weinersmith, illustrations by Boulet
First Second Books
Fiction, MG? Fantasy/Graphic Novel/Humor/Poetry
Themes: Cross-Genre, Diversity, Epics, Fables, Girl Power, Twists and Updated Classics
****+
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 the "kingdom" 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.