Wonderfully Wild: Rewilding a School and Community is a 2025 picture book, written by Jessica Stremer and illustrated by Josee Masse.
Wonderfully Wild is a pleasant book full of gentle instruction. It is also nicely original, both in message and focus.
In Wonderfully Wild, a storm destroys a willow tree that had been beloved by generations of students at a school. The students mourn the tree, then set out to, as one student suggests, “grow new willows.” The rest of the book documents the process, showing the students gathering branches, placing the clippings in water, and growing new willow trees. This, the book tells us, heals the students’ hearts.
The students don’t stop with growing clippings. They transfer them to larger pots, put them in the greenhouse for nurturing protection, and make the new willows part of a larger process of rewilding their space. They measure the plants’ growth along the way, and pay attention to what works and what doesn’t. They build houses for birds and bats, and mourn the new willows that don’t make it.
Several things are rare about this book. First, it centers a tree in a community, and in children’s hearts. Second, this really is a community-centered book, rather than one or two kids leading and the rest playing back-up. This is a collective story. And third, it shows the formal learning process adapting both to circumstance (the death of the tree) and community values.
Five pages of nonfiction guidance on rewilding and how to support plants and animals follow the story, making it easy to teach with.
I really see just two weaknesses here, and they are related. First, everything happens too easily. It seems like there are no obstacles to the rewilding: no community members who want to do something different with the space, no pressure to teach reading and writing, etc. (Yes, some willow clippings don’t make it, but that doesn’t slow the larger project at all.) Second, the kids seem to know what to do intuitively. I bought the kids crying over the tree, and even wishing for a new one…but knowing how to trim the branches? How?
So, a rare book, and a good one, but with some bumps.
