Shadow Fox

Carlie Sorosiak's Shadow Fox is a magical adventure for 11 year olds told by a scrawny, bad-tempered fox with a passion for fish and a den full of stolen shoes.

What happens

The fox is the narrator, and she's quite clear that the story is about foxes (so it's a good one). She's been scavenging by a motel on the shore of a huge lake, where an old woman called Nan feeds her trout on the porch. But Nan hasn't been there for days.

Instead there's a girl in Nan's jumper. Bee is Nan's granddaughter, and Nan went out on the lake in her boat and never came back.

Something happens when the fox and Bee look at each other. The fox starts to understand human speech. She dreams Bee's dreams. And when a groundskeeper catches her with a pole and threatens to turn her into a hat, his gloves melt into pumpkin soup.

Then a man called Stew arrives in a fishing-net scarf. He's come to take the chosen one to an island in the lake that needs saving. He thought that was Bee. It turns out to be the fox.

Her voice is the best thing about it. She's grumpy, proud and very funny (when Bee mentions an old pet hamster, the fox's first thought is whether it was tasty). But underneath she's lonely. She sleeps curled round a stuffed toy bird that still smells of her sister, and her fur is falling out.

Be ready for some sadness. Nan is missing and might have drowned, and the fox's mother and sister are gone, though the opening never says quite what happened to them. Bee worries that her mum doesn't really like her. A reader going through a loss might find it close to home, although there's lots of warmth around it.

If your reader likes an animal narrator with LOTS of attitude, this is a great pick.

What to read next

My Life as a Cat is another of Carlie Sorosiak's animal stories, and a lovely next step. An alien who meant to spend a month on Earth as a human ends up as a cat instead, and a girl called Olive helps him.