This book is based on the true story of tiriganiarjuk, or as the scientists call her, Miso, an Artic fox who was tracked travelling from Norway towards Canada, walking 2000 miles in just 76 days. An incredible feat.
Leila is a young girl travelling to be with her mother in Tromsø, Norway. Her mother is working with a scientific team to track a blue fox as she treks across land and ice. As Leila arrives at immigration in Norway she is hesitant. She begins to remember her escape from Damascus with her family, as they fled to safety. It was traumatic until they settled with freedom in England. But not long after, her mother left to work in Norway. Leila doesn’t understand why her mother sends a friend to collect her from the airport, or why a fox is more important than a daughter.
Leila’s mum and her scientific team have managed to place a tracking collar on Miso and are following her every move. They are setting out by boat, travelling north further into the Artic to follow her. Leila joins them.
Interspersed with Leila and her mum’s story of following the fox, we also see into Miso’s world, as she faces hunger, all her instincts alert for danger as she treks. We see her snuggled in a circle with her face buried in her tail. Her life is one of the wild.
Leila and the Blue Fox has an important message: family, love, with an environmental message about animals having to adapt to the new normal, for better or worse.
This book is well written. I found myself swept along with Leila and keenly peering into Miso’s world. This book’s a keeper.
Reviewed by Rowena Morcom
Age Guide 9+
READ A REVIEW of Julia and the Shark
ABOUT THE AUTHOR & ILLUSTRATOR
Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de Freston met in 2009, when Kiran was a student and Tom was artist-in-residence at Cambridge University. They have been a couple and collaborators ever since, but Julia and the Shark is their first novel. Kiran is the award-winning, bestselling author of stories including The Girl of Ink & Stars, The Way Past Winter, and The Deathless Girls, and Tom is making his illustrative debut having worked as an acclaimed artist for many years. They live in Oxford with their rescue cat Luna, in a house between a river and a forest.
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