We came across the books at Portland’s World Forestry Centre gift shop, and bought the first instalment later that day at Powell’s. We got several chapters in before I (Nicole here, official bedtime reader) realized that the author, Colin Meloy, is also the lead singer of the Portland-based Decemberists.
So it follows that the series is a Portland love-in (and sometimes parody), but that’s also relatable to any urban environment with vast expanses of wild at its edges. Living in North Vancouver, BC, we have come to see the ‘tree-line’ as the beginning of a precinct stretching to the northern fringes of the earth that’s far beyond our imaginations, and ruled by bears, owls, and all-knowing trees. In Wildwood–and Meloy’s imagination–the bears, owls, and trees speak, battle and become increasingly entangled with the two young, gutsy outsiders who break through into what the everyday Portlanders call ‘the Impassable Wilderness.”
We’ve just finished book two, Under Wildwood, and are now dizzyingly unsure what to read until book three, Wildwood Imperium, is published in February.
Pacific Northwest Family 