In Emily Hughes’ beautiful picture book we meet a little girl who has known nothing but nature from birth – she was taught to talk by birds, to eat by bears and to play by foxes – she is unashamedly, irrefutably, irrepressibly wild.

That is, until she is snared by some very strange animals that look oddly like her, but they don’t talk right, eat right, or play correctly. She’s puzzled by their behaviour and their insistence to live in these strange concrete structures known as ‘apartments’. There’s no green here, no animals, no trees, no rivers. Now she lives in the comfort of civilisation. But will civilisation get comfortable with her?

Wild is a 21st century response to Maurice Sendak’s children’s classic, Where the Wild Things Are. Awash with colour and full of atmosphere, it offers visual treats to enchant children and indulge their wilder tendencies.

Emily Hughes was born in Hawaii, USA but lives and works in the United Kingdom. She is inspired by Chinese cinema and illustrators such as Blair Lent and Gyo Fujikawa. Her work has been exhibited across the capital and her book Nana Shaped Like a Banana came second in the 2012 Macmillan Prize for Children’s Picture Books.