Review: Leila And The Blue Fox


This beautiful illustrated middle grade fiction has all the qualities of a permanent place-keeper on one's bookshelf; kids with whom it resonates won’t be able to surrender it. By the creators who brought us Julia and the Shark, Leila and the Blue Fox, presents a balanced and bespoke narrative based on the real life crossing made by an Artic fox across the Artic circle.

Fox, known in human circles as, Miso, is driven by her wild desire, to migrate. She knows not exactly where or how long such a journey will take her. Distance is inconsequential. Survival is her daily modus operandi. To keep on going is her sole motivation.

Leila, a young Syrian refugee resides in London with her cousin and aunty. Life is relatively trouble free and wholesome, yet there is an artic circle sized hole within Leila that haunts her; the reason why her mother virtually abandoned her for the last six years.

When Leila’s mother sends for Leila to join her in Tromsø, Norway, trepidation pollutes hope. Her mother is a renowned scientist and researcher and is shoulder deep in her new expedition; the tracking of a tiny artic fox. The fox’s migration is significant for many reasons, including the need to understand a wild animal’s response to climate change and their innate predisposition to adapt and survive.

Leila and Fox’s story is told from both of their perspectives; the wild and the wild at heart. Leila’s emotions are a mass of frozen ice floes and bergs. She’s desperate to know more about her mother but bitter at her for walking out on her. The stark and brutal landscape of the Artic circle encompassing Norway, Greenland and Canada is a stunning backdrop for Leila’s anger and frustrations.

During the chartered boat trip with her mother, mother’s workmate and her daughter, Leila is eventually seduced by the magic and magnificence that can be seen and felt around her. She becomes the official social media facilitator for the expedition and it’s this initial outreach of responsibility along with her growing wonderment for Miso that wedges open the way forward for she and her mother. Their reunion is redolent of an icebreaker vessel carving its way through the floes; messy and difficult but consistent.

Tom de Freston’s unobtrusive illustrative narrative is portrayed with full page sketches of Fox and her surroundings. Smudged edges in monochromatic shades provide profound atmosphere and provocative perspectives which deepens the poetic nature of this tale.

Leila and Fox’s journeys are poignant, inevitable and in short, epic. Hargrave’s prose offers a buffet of emotions that allows readers to feel, explore and marvel and perhaps most importantly, to quietly sit back after the trek and ponder the many themes that seep throughout this story. It is tale of exodus, of finding, of surviving and forgiving. The plights of two small individuals resonate with implications for us all. It is this magnitude of intent and setting that makes Leila and the Blue Fox worthy of that permanent place on the bookshelf.

Title:  Leila And The Blue Fox
Author:  Kiran Millwood Hargrave
Illustrator:  Tom de Freston
Publisher:  Orion Children’s Books (Hachette), $26.99
Publication Date:  September 2022
Format: Hardback
ISBN: 9781510110274
For ages:  9 – 14
Type:  Middle Grade Fiction

Buy the Book: Hachette Australia, Boomerang Books

 

 

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