Wildwood

Wildwood by Colin Meloy, 541 pages

Prue McKeel is your average 12-year-old, riding her bike around her neighborhood of Portland with her baby brother, Mac, on a lovely fall day. Everything changes when Mac is abducted by a murder of crows, who carry him across the river into the Impassable Wilderness. Suddenly, Prue and her classmate Curtis (who tags along, despite Prue's protestations) are embarking on a wilderness rescue mission filled with anthropomorphic animals, an evil witch, coyote soldiers, and a wild group of bandits.

I read this first book of Decemberists' singer Meloy's Wildwood Chronicles to my daughter, who absolutely loved it — though given Meloy's penchant for multisyllabic and archaic words, we had to pause several times for definitions ("phalanx" and "bayonet" come to mind). Despite what she termed "juicy words," she completely fell in love with Prue's strength and resourcefulness, Curtis's haplessness, and the many colorful characters of Wildwood. We'll be starting on the second book directly.