Find a book
Donate

Leila and the Blue Fox

by Kiran Millwood Hargrave, illustrated by Tom de Freston

Interest age: 9 to 11
Reading age: 9+

Published by Hachette Children’s Group, 2022

  • Adventure

About this book

Fox is walking, endlessly walking, searching for food. Meanwhile, Leila is travelling to Norway to see her mother, whom she hasn’t seen for six years. She’s trying not to remember another journey she’s made, years before, from Damascus to the UK. Now it’s summer in the Arctic Circle and the bright, endless sun threatens to shine a light on the awkwardness between Leila and her mum.

Her mum is a meteorologist and, with her colleague Liv, is tracking a blue fox they’ve named Miso. The environmental changes in the Arctic mean that Miso is walking for more miles every day than usual. The scientists plan to follow her, across the frozen seas and landscape, and Leila’s keen to join them. Could this be a chance to convince her mum to focus on her, not Miso?

Then Miso and Leila’s worlds meet, in an icy, treacherous environment, and Leila needs to make a brave, dangerous decision.

Perfect for upper primary children, this is a moving story, based on true events, with many thrilling moments of danger and adventure. The Arctic landscape is brought to life vividly in dazzling prose and stunning blue artwork. The need for both animals and people to migrate is explored in a thoughtful, sensitive way, as is the mother/daughter relationship. A real triumph.

About the author

Kiran Millwood Hargrave was born in Surrey in 1990, and her earliest ambition was to be a cat, closely followed by a cat-owner or the first woman on Mars. She has achieved only one of these things, but discovered that being a writer lets you imagine whatever you want.

She started writing poetry in her final year at university, producing three poetry books and a play before she turned to fiction. Her bestselling debut The Girl of Ink & Stars, about a mapmaker’s daughter who must save her island, won the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize 2017 and the British Book Awards Children’s Book of the Year. Her second standalone story, The Island at the End of Everything, was shortlisted for the Blue Peter Book Award and the Costa Children’s Book Award, and long listed for the CILIP Carnegie Medal. Her third book, The Way Past Winter, was the Blackwell’s Children’s Book of the Year 2018.

Kiran lives in Oxford with her husband, the artist Tom de Freston, and the fulfilment of one of her earliest ambitions: their cat, Luna.

More books like this

Explore our Bookfinder

Lists of recommended reads

Discover more booklists
Share this page Twitter Facebook LinkedIn