We are ready to listen. Are you a fan of lycanthropic coming-of-age tales? Sound off in the comments or howl at the moon—we don’t judge.

Not a man who turns into a wolf. A boy who is a wolf.

For decades, the cinematic werewolf has been typecast. He’s either the hulking, slobbering antagonist in a leather vest (hello, Teen Wolf ), the tragic Victorian gentleman losing his cufflinks to fur, or the punchline of a B-movie splatterfest. But lurking in the shadows of the genre, rarely given the spotlight, is a more nuanced archetype: