Betsy Who Cried Wolf By: Gail Carson Levine

My very first impression of this book was confusion??? I kept waiting for something important to happen, or rather I was waiting for a lesson to be learned. I think the author was trying to make a point that everyone can get along, and you shouldn't just assume that wolves are going to hurt your flock of sheep. But even by the title of the book, I assumed that the moral of the story was to "not cry wolf" so that people will believe you when something really goes wrong and your in need of help.

This book is about an 8 year old girl named Betsy who goes through Sheppard School. Betsy is in charge of a flock of sheep that she takes care of everyday for the farmers in her community. she is taught different things such as "look to your left" and "look to your right" and "look straight forward" in order to spot the big bad wolf. When reading this book, I immediately went back to the old tale "the boy who cried wolf". The moral of that story was to demonstrate that lying can be dangerous because if you always lie, no one will believe you when your really in trouble. However this story, "Betsy Who Cried Wolf" was very different from the original tale. Betsy meets a wolf named Zimmo, but he's no ordinary wolf. He has a plan to get food from her, and he eventually gets a piece of Betsy's pie! He ended up startling the sheep, but in the end he saves them and herds them all together for Betsy. Betsy remembers what the farmers told her to do, and she goes to tell them about the wolf, but no one believes her when she tells them what happened. After a few times of her "crying wolf" she eventually proves that there was in fact a real wolf and the farmers did apologize to Betsy for not believeing her the first time. Zimmo and Betsy stay friends and Zimmo actually promises to help keep the sheep safe by taking the "Sheppard's Oath".

I understand that the author was trying to make a more hip version of the old tale, but I guess I liked the original much better. In reality, wolves and sheep don't get along and farmers do have to worry about various animals hurting or even killing their sheep. It wasn't believable for me, but I think most kids would probably like the story on the surface because it has a lot of funny lines (For example, the sheep talk and say quirky things). For the kids, they might find it funny to see this big bad wolf help this little girl out and eat pie instead of be mean and scary. On a positive note, there was an abundance of descriptive text and there was many illustrations that made the story more entertaining.