The Fox Girl and the White Gazelle

Victoria Williamson's The Fox Girl and the White Gazelle is a moving Glasgow story for 11 year olds about two girls who've each lost more than they can say.

What happens

Caylin is nearly twelve and lives on the Drumhill estate. At school she's the girl everyone is scared of. In the very first chapter she's lying in wait in an alley to take a classmate's birthday money. What nobody knows is where that money goes. It pays for tins of soup, toilet roll and chips for her mum, who has hardly got out of bed since Grandad died.

Reema is twelve and has just arrived from Aleppo. Her father was badly hurt in a gas attack and now has seizures. Her big brother Jamal has been missing since the night the family fled. Everyone keeps telling her Scotland is home now. She doesn't agree (though she only shouts it in her head).

Then Reema's family moves into the ground-floor flat in Caylin's block. First impressions are not good!

The chapters swap between the two girls, so your reader hears both sides of every awkward meeting. Caylin's voice is fierce and funny and full of Scottish words (her bedroom's "in a right guddle"). Reema's is careful and polite on the outside, with a whole lot going on underneath. It's very easy to feel for both of them, even when Caylin is being awful.

In between there are short poems from a fox, a mother with newborn cubs and nowhere safe to keep them. It's a hurt vixen and her cubs, hidden away on the estate, that bring the girls together. And it turns out they have something else in common. Both of them can really run.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

This one deals with some very real things. There's bullying and stealing, a mum who drinks and is depressed, and a child keeping it all secret for fear of Social Services. Reema remembers barrel bombs and poison gas, and nobody knows if Jamal is alive. None of it is graphic, but it's heavy in places.

For a child who's already anxious about family problems or war, it might be one to read alongside them. If your reader is ready for a story that takes friendship seriously, this could be one that stays with them for a long time.

What to read next

Victoria Williamson also wrote The Boy with the Butterfly Mind, another one for readers who like hearing both sides. Two children take turns telling it, a girl who has to be perfect and a boy whose ADHD keeps landing him in trouble.