Pax

Sara Pennypacker's Pax is a story for 10 year olds told half by a boy and half by the fox he raised.

What happens

Peter found Pax as a kit and brought him up. They have never been apart. Then Peter's father enlists, war is coming, and Peter is driven three hundred miles away to a grandfather who is not used to having a child about.

On the way the car stops at the edge of a wood. Peter's father takes the fox by the scruff and sets him down. Peter pulls out Pax's favourite toy, an old plastic soldier, and throws it into the trees. Pax goes after it the way he always does. When he comes back with it in his mouth, the car doors are slamming and the engine is already running.

The chapters alternate. One belongs to Pax, who reads the world by smell, who knew his boy was crying before he heard it, and who waits at the roadside because that is what you do. The next belongs to Peter, who is twelve, lying on a narrow bed in a house that reeks of fried onions, working out that he has made a terrible mistake.

The fox chapters are the reason to read this. Pax can smell that the father is lying. He checks his boy for blood and finds none, and cannot understand what is wrong if nothing is broken. He has watched birds from his pen for hours, quivering at how free they are. It is never soppy and it is always from inside the animal.

Peter's half is quieter and rawer. His mum died a few years ago, his dad went hard and silent afterwards, and Peter learned to keep out of his way. He carries an anxiety he pictures as a snake, hissing the same thing at him over and over. You aren't where you should be.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

There is an early memory of a baby rabbit caught in a trap and frightened to death by coyotes in the night, and Peter's mother lifting it out and crying. It is not gratuitous, but a child who cannot bear animals coming to harm will find that page hard, and the war is closing in throughout.

It is American in its furniture too, so expect sneakers and a homeroom teacher rather than trainers and a form tutor.

What to read next

For a reader who wants another animal telling their own story, Michael Morpurgo's War Horse is in the library. Joey is sold away from his mother at a horse sale when he is not yet six months old, into the hands of a man he refuses to call his master, and then the First World War finds him.