Pilu of the Woods
Ratings31
Average rating4.1
The art was lovely but the story bored me to tears.. didn't finish the book. I wanted to love this more! :(
Content: Death of a parent, grief, bullying
The art is beautiful. The feelings are so raw. This is the story of how Pilu helps Willow navigate grief and the regret surviving family sometime feel about the last minutes spent with their loved one who is now gone.
This was cute but the story was for a very young level. The art was mind-blowing! The forests and flowers looked ethereal and made me want to draw them.
Artwork is an absolute delight and the story is very charming and bittersweet. Perfect for middle graders.
The Art was gorgeous, the story however fell flat. The metaphor of emotions as being monsters, especially monsters that could be put in jars, didn't work for me. Also there were no real consequences. In the beginning Willow punches a boy, I believe in the face, and nothing happens because of it. Not even a parental ‘we don't solve things or express ourselves by hurting others'.
Pilu of the Woods is simply adorable. Even if it's aimed at kids, can appreciate how this story was crafted to explore complex feelings of loss and loneliness, and how wanting to help someone in the same position can force us to confront our own “monsters”.
Willow has a fight with her older sister and runs off into the woods with her dog, where they discovers a tree spirit named Pilu crying under a tree for surprisingly similar reasons. As Willow convinced Pilu that she needs to go home, we gradually learn Willow's own sad history and origin of her monsters.
I also loved the nerdy forest facts Willow learned from her father, dispensed like a kid who finds willing ears for the first time but even then there was a limit to how much an audience could take. It came to a nice resolution for the overall theme.
Great artwork and colour palette!
ARC courtesy of NetGalley. #PiluOfTheWoods #NetGalley