Night Creature
By Rodman Philbrick and Lynn Harnett
4/5
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About this ebook
Abandoned as a child, Gruff is taken in and raised by a Wolfmother. She teaches him to survive in the wild—and to be wary of the Legwalkers.
When a chance encounter brings Gruff near humans again, he wants to know more about this world to which he no longer belongs. But as he soon discovers, he doesn’t really fit in with the wolves either. As Gruff feels his body change into that of a monster—and hears the evil call coming from others like him—he knows it’s time to face the terrible truth about himself.
Rodman Philbrick
Rodman Philbrick grew up on the coast of New Hampshire and has been writing since the age of sixteen. For a number of years he published mystery and suspense fiction for adults. Brothers & Sinners won the Shamus Award in 1994, and two of his other detective novels were nominees. In 1993 his debut young adult novel, Freak the Mighty, won numerous honors, and in 1998 was made into the feature film The Mighty, starring Sharon Stone and James Gandolfini. Freak the Mighty has become a standard reading selection in thousands of classrooms worldwide, and there are more than three million copies in print. In 2010 Philbrick won a Newbery Honor for The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg.
Read more from Rodman Philbrick
Related to Night Creature
Titles in the series (6)
Night Creature Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Wereing Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNight Creature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsChildren of the Wolf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Wereing Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsChildren of the Wolf Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
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Reviews for Night Creature
1 rating1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I first encountered the "Werewolf Chronicles" trilogy at a local library as a kid, and despite not remembering much about the actual plot, bits and pieces of it kind of stuck in the back of my mind since then. A few years back I encountered all three on sale pretty cheaply in a used bookstore and couldn't resist purchasing this little piece of my childhood memory. They got buried in my book hoard for a while and I uncovered them recently when I thought I'd give them a shot.Night Creature, this first book in the trilogy, is not actually entirely what you might expect from a child's werewolf story. Though clearly intended for a younger audience, it is actually at times quite serious. The bulk of this book takes place in the woods, where Gruff, the main character -- a boy left with wolves as a baby and raised by them -- discovers that he has begun transforming into a monster during the three nights surrounding the full moon. Used to being much weaker than the rest of his wolf family, this discovery is initially met with some fascination and joy -- he's much stronger and faster and his senses are much keener than he is used to. However, this quickly fades as a pack of much crueler, meaner werewolves discovers him and urges him to kill and become a part of their pack. All Gruff wants is his normal life back, with his siblings and his Wolfmother, but it starts to become obvious the werewolves will not leave him alone until they get what they want.Gruff is a likable, friendly character, and it would be easy for younger readers to identify with his desire to live up to the expectations of his family as he grows older and his frustration as he fails to perform as well as his siblings -- even if they are wolves. As Gruff begins to discover more about himself and his past, his story deepens and he begins to quickly mature. It's interesting to read how he adjusts to new complications in his life and how his loyalty to the family that cared for him all of these years never wavers despite the changes. The human characters in the book thusfar are much more two-dimensional than either Gruff or his wolf-family, despite playing a prominent role towards the end. The adult characters in particular read as very shaky, stereotypical "redneck" men and I can't help but feel very little effort went into making them into more than cardboard cut-out human antagonists. The chapters are short -- never more than a few pages -- so this is a great book to carry around with you if you want a fun, thrilling book to read but will be forced to keep putting it down throughout the day. Despite some jerky dialogue and the aforementioned lack of character development in some instances, I am really curious to see how this story progresses and how Gruff comes to terms with his rapidly changing life.