The Why behind Wild Bird by Wendelin Van Draanen

The Why behind Wild Bird

When I was a young girl, there was a list of chores posted on our family's refrigerator. It was actually more a grid than a list, and it was structured in a way that rotated the various chores among my siblings and me. Each day we'd be required to complete and check off every task in our column.

I liked knowing what I had to do, and I especially liked the feeling of checking something off. And I think maybe that chore grid is why I adopted the lifelong habit of living by the list. 

I've made lists for small tasks and big—for getting into college, for grocery shopping, for finding an agent, building a house, preparing a nursery, for what I'm doing tomorrow, what I need to pack, who I need to call, what I need to fix in a book revision...the list of lists goes on and on. Lists have been my road map, my guidebook, my way to focus. I'm a "finisher" largely because I live by the list.

But of all the things I've done and tackled and overcome, I never even thought to make the most important list of all: A list of the qualities—the character traits—I wanted for myself.

There’s a difference between contemplating what we want to be (doctor, teacher, astronaut…) and who we want to be (fearless, kind, thoughtful…), and the process of writing it down makes us really analyze the who. It helps us commit. Writing it down makes it official.

When we're young, the adults in our lives tell us not to lie or steal or cheat or bully or brag or hog the ball. As children we are told how we should be and what to do, and for the most part we try to please the adults in our lives.

And then comes adolescence.

Middle school is the place where kids start coming into their own. They begin to question authority. That—coupled with the need to fit into a group of their peers—serves to erode the rules they've previously lived by. This can be a slow, stealthy erosion, or one that seems to knock down the structure of Do's and Don'ts all at once. 

The strength of the pull to fit in cannot be overstated. According to the National Institute of Health, the age a person first tries alcohol has continued to drop in the United States, with a rapid rise in its consumption now starting at age 10 (yes, that's 4th/5th grade) and peaking between ages 13 and 14 (the end of middle school/early high school). At that point, more than 50% of students have used alcohol or drugs.

Let's pause and really absorb that.

Half of children in the US have used alcohol or drugs by age fourteen.

These are sobering statistics, but they're real, and they're the reason Wren Clemmens—the girl who goes off the rails in Wild Bird—took her first wrong turn as a lonely sixth grader, and is on a fast track of self-destruction by the time we meet her as a high school freshman. It’s the reason why, as edgy and intense as the book is, I wrote it in a way that middle school librarians won't get flack for "language or content." I believe middle school is a pivotal chance to engage tweens/teens in meaningful, future-defining discussions. A book can be hugely helpful with that, and I wanted Wild Bird to be available to kids before they found themselves in a wrong-turn situation. 

And aside from Wild Bird being a cautionary tale, it presents the idea of crafting that most important list of all—a list of the traits you want for yourself; a considered definition of who you want to be.

Looking back, I really wish that, as a teen, I'd sat down in a quiet corner and given serious thought to the who. Because making my own list—defining me for me—would have helped me be a stronger, wiser, kinder, better person at a younger age, and this realization is at the heart of why I wrote Wild Bird.  Wren's reluctant metamorphosis finally springs from her building her list; from her defining who she wants to be, and coming to grips with the person she had become by default. 

Descriptions of Wild Bird tend to center around Wren being sent against her will to a desert camp for troubled teens and what she has to do to survive. But that's just the setting. The set up. The purpose of the story is to help the reader see that their future is shaped starting now; that it's time to figure out who they want to be.  Because everything else—good friendships, true love, career success, a charitable heart, happiness—everything else is the result of figuring that out. 

Author's Bio: Wendelin Van Draanen was the featured author for grades 7-12 for the 2021 WPCTE English Festival. She written more than thirty novels for young readers and teens. She is the author of the 18-book Edgar-winning Sammy Keyes series—often called “The new Nancy Drew”—and wrote Flipped, which was named a Top 100 Children’s Novel for the 21st Century by School Library Journal and became a Warner Brothers feature film. Her other stand-alone titles include Wild Bird (ALA 2019 “Best Fiction for Young Adults”) and others. A classroom teacher for fifteen years, Van Draanen resides in California where she can be spotted riding shopping carts across parking lots. She and her husband, Mark Parsons, have two sons and enjoy the three R’s: Reading, Running, and Rock’n’Roll.