Wolf in the Snow

Matthew Cordell’s picture book “Wolf in the Snow” was published in 2017. The story tells of a girl and a wolf cub lost in a snowstorm. The girl helps the wolf cub return to her parents, who in turn bring help to the girl herself.

A comparison of Cordell’s fairy tale with the well-known “Little Red Riding Hood” is inevitable, and this move seems deliberate, so clearly are all the necessary attributes – a wolf, a little girl and a bright red cloak with a hood. In fact, this whole story was born from one drawing – a small figure in a cloak in the middle of an endless white field and opposite her a wary wolf, looking tensely at the girl. “I liked the combination of red, white and black,” the artist explains, “the uncertainty of the moment itself, the questions that arise about what is happening between these two and what will happen next.”

Cordell painted in watercolor, in a free form, trying to convey the entire concept only by graphic means, without using words. He used a rather unusual artistic technique – a stylistic contrast within one book: the girl is depicted primitively, exaggeratedly, like a comic book or cartoon character in defiance of the realistic and sometimes frightening wolves. And this work, by contrast, moves from the drawings directly into the plot – despite their menacing appearance and the established cannibalistic image in popular culture, Cordell’s wolves are good-natured and noble.

The result is a modern parable, a deceptively simple and tender story about friendship, kindness and oppressive stereotypes.