Read aloud and pause for your child to point, answer or join a sound; they do not need to read the words. The sound words are play, not recordings of wolf calls. Packs differ in size and habits, so one pictured family does not show how every wolf lives. When your child starts reading alone, try Fold 1, Run, Wolf, Run!, then Fold 3, Wolf: Voices on the Wind.
The facts behind the pictures
The gray wolf is the largest wild member of the dog family. Its pups are born with blue eyes that turn amber, yellow, gold or brown as they grow.
A wolf pack is a family: a mother and father and their young. The parents lead by raising pups and guiding hunts, not by fighting for rank.
Wolf pups are born blind and deaf, with their eyes sealed shut. Their eyes open when they are about two weeks old.
A mother wolf gives birth in a den, often dug into a hillside or under tree roots, with a tunnel leading to an underground chamber.
The whole family helps raise pups. After a hunt, adults swallow meat and bring it back up at the den for the pups to eat.
Chasing, wrestling and pouncing build the strength and skills pups need to hunt. By autumn they are strong enough to join the adults.
Wolves howl to find pack members when they are apart, and to tell other packs that the area is taken.
A wolf's nose has about 200 million smell sensors; a person's has about 5 million. With the right wind, a wolf can smell another animal more than a mile away.
A tail held high shows confidence, a loose tail shows a relaxed wolf, and a tucked tail shows fear. Wolves also wag their tails when calm or playful.
A dense undercoat traps body heat, while long guard hairs on top shed rain, snow and wind and keep the undercoat dry.
A pack's home range can be huge: 25 to 150 square miles in the Great Lakes states, and over 1,000 in parts of Alaska and northern Canada. Young wolves often leave home to start their own families.
Big paws with long, spreading toes carry a wolf's weight over deep snow that bogs down deer and elk.
Forests are a classic wolf home, but gray wolves can also live in mountains, grasslands and frozen tundra wherever there is enough prey and enough space where few wolves are killed by people.
