While most novelists write to entertain and to express a thought-provoking theme, a shorter term goal of any novel is to keep readers reading. After all, there are plenty of books out in the world, and most readers can easily abandon one and pick up another. To keep readers reading, a novelist must do two things well: build a plot in a way that creates suspense and create characters that readers can relate to and care about. Sharing factual information is a less important goal for a novel, but it can make a reader's experience much more rich and interesting. In fact, some readers prefer to read novels that teach them something new about history, science, or culture. It's the best of both worlds!
How does Jean Craighead George teach readers about gray wolves? How does her approach differ from that of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service--which has, after all, a very different purpose for presenting information? Use the tabs below to compare passages in the two texts, and see if you can identify the similarities and differences between the two approaches.
How to Share Food
How to Speak Wolf
Throughout the first fifty pages of the novel, Miyax is preoccupied with figuring out how to feed herself, and she believes that she can persuade the wolves to help her if she can get them to accept her as part of the pack. Her first idea is to share the food that the adult wolves bring back for the pups. However, that plan meets many obstacles, including Miyax's incomplete understanding of how wolves feed their young.
Here is how the fact sheet reveals the information about wolf behavior that Miyax needs to know:
Pups depend on their mother’s milk for the first month, then are gradually weaned and fed regurgitated meat brought by pack members. By seven to eight months of age, when they are almost fully grown, the pups begin traveling with the adults.
Now use these questions to consider how facts are shared in fiction, compared to informational text.
| How does Miyax learn these facts about wolf parenting? What does she do with that information? | Miyax observes the wolves closely when they return from a hunt. She sees an adult wolf regurgitate some caribou meat into the mouth of a pup. Then Miyax tests her theory by getting a wolf to regurgitate food for her, which she joyfully cooks and eats. |
| If you were first learning how wolves feed their young by reading Julie of the Wolves, instead of a fact sheet, how would your experience be different? | It would take you much longer to get to the point, but you might be more likely to remember the facts because of the vivid and suspenseful way they are revealed in the novel. |
Miyax often sees and hears the wolves howl, and she makes some assumptions about what those sounds mean. Reread this section on howling from the government fact sheet, and see if you can recall some passages in the novel that reveal similar information about how wolves communicate.
Wolves use their distinctive howl to communicate. Biologists have identified a few of the reasons that wolves howl. First, they like to howl. They also howl to reinforce social bonds within the pack, to announce the beginning or end of a hunt, sound an alarm, locate members of the pack, and warn other wolves to stay out of their territory. Wolves howl more frequently in the evening and early morning, especially during winter breeding and pup-rearing.
There is no single paragraph on howling in Julie of the Wolves. Instead, facts about wolf communication are spread through the story. Use the questions below to identify other differences in how facts are delivered in a novel, compared to a fact sheet.
| What does Miyax believe about Amaroq's howls? | Miyax assumes that Amaroq, the pack leader, howls to call the pack to attention, to signal it's time to hunt, or simply to gather them together. |
| What other ways do wolves communicate, according to the novel? | The wolves in the novel make many other noises as well--yips and yaps as well as grunts and growls. They also communicate through body postures and movements and in the way they touch each other. |
| What is different about the novel's approach to describing wolf language, compared to the fact sheet? | The novel reveals facts about wolf language in the context of interactions between the characters or Miyax's attempts to resolve the story's conflict. |
| What are the main reasons for the differences between the fact sheet and novel? | Because the novel is much longer and has other purposes besides informing readers, it is able to describe many forms of communication. And since it must keep readers involved in a story, the novel uses facts to address and extend a conflict. (Sometimes what Miyax learns about wolf language helps her solve problems; at other times, what she learns creates new problems, or complications.) |
