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
I am so late to the Van Draanen party, but I am so glad I finally arrived. This is the third book I have read and loved by her, and it is because she is so good at crafting her characters and getting us inside their heads.
Wren's head was a tough place to be. She was so angry at the world, her family, herself. It takes quite a while, but when she finally reveals the depth of the damage she did to those who loved her, I was not surprised that they went for a last resort solution.
Wren't physical, mental, and emotional journey was tough, and Van Draanen does an incredible job immersing us in it. Maybe that was why the payoff was so big for me.
Overall: Another amazing Van Draanen book, which chronicled one young woman's journey back from despair to hope.
