Give me a middle grade book filled with the wonders of nature and its juxtaposition with human life and I'm as happy as can be. Although this didn't quite have the emotional draw that Julia and the shark had I still felt connected with Leila and her protection of this tiny arctic fox. The parental relationship[ with her mother was deep and flawed, but it was lovingly and gently explored against the stunning arctic backdrop. The illustrations were gorgeous and worked perfectly with this superb story.

Such a beautiful and stunning book, the illustrations are amazing and just so gorgeous, they really emphasise the story and make it so much more enjoyable to read. This is a children’s book, but I read as an adult and I think an be read by any age , definitely going to be a classic

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Displacement, throught the eyes of a child and the fried of it circumventing her mother. It's a solid story in a garb of a children's book. Adult or kids alike could read it and enjoy thoroughly. Beautiful illustrations makes it immersive for the readers. Absolutely loved it.

What a beautiful, frosted delight of a book! I enjoyed the skillful handling of trauma in children and families who have been forced to move on and start again elsewhere, which was very insightful. The illustrations are gorgeous and really enhance the drama of the story. It is quite simply, a stunning book and perfect for curling up with on a cold, frosty night in winter. Although it is a children's book, I feel that it can be enjoyed by readers of any age and that it will soon become a contemporary winter classic in children's literature. Wonderful!

What a beautiful book, Julia and the Shark instantly became one of my favourites of last year and this one has done the same. From the beautiful illustrations to the empowering story this whole book is gorgeous

A visual and literary treat. Such a wonderful story that is so engaging. It is based in truth, which I felt made it all the more interesting. A read that I am wanting to share with my class at the earliest opportunity.

Leila and her mother are from Syria, they fled their home to escape war. Her mother moved to the Arctic Circle to study the Arctic Fox, leaving Leila in London - until one day she invites Leila to visit her in Norway to join her on a fox-tracking research trip…

Based on the true story of Anna the Arctic Fox - who walked from Norway to Canada across the sea ice, travelling over 2,000 miles in 76 days - we join Leila, Amani, Liv, Britt & Matty on a wonderful, wildlife-filled adventure through Arctic waters following Miso the fox.

Including exciting encounters with polar bears, arctic terns, minke whales, leopard seals, orcas and even a blue whale, Leila And The Blue Fox is a brilliant fun-filled, nature-themed book for little ones.

The book highlights the issues that come with the climate crisis, like global warming & rising sea levels, and how they are affecting wildlife behaviours and migration patterns.

One of my favourite parts of this book was the little snippets of Miso’s journey, which were beautifully woven into the main story, accompanied by the loveliest illustrations. It was really magical to get a glimpse of her journey as well as Leila’s.

This was a really gorgeous book, KMH never disappoints.

Big thank you to @netgalley @hachettekids & @orionbooks

Loved this as much as I loved Julia and the Shark. I enjoy anything animal related and this doesn’t disappoint. Lots of likeable characters and, of course, Miso the fox. Beautiful illustrations and I love the way these books are presented. Looking forward to the next one.

A beautifully illustrated tale about a travelling fox and a Syrian daughter reuniting with her estranged mother. I have never read anything remotely like it, so kudos for that. I read it in one sitting and I will definitely recommend it.

This is the second middle grade pairing of wife and husband, Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de Freston. Last year they debuted with 'Julia and the Shark', a brilliant story of family heartache, mental illness and conservation. Producing another middle grade in the same format with a feel of such a special and collectible series is a celebration of how much creating quality literature for this age range must mean to them both. I'm really thrilled about it!!

There really isn't anything much like a Kiran Millwood Hargrave book. Whether you are a fan of her adult or YA books already or not, it truly doesn't matter that this is a book for kids - you'll enjoy it just as much. All her trademark writing traits remain the same, the hidden meanings and often stomach churning angst with an ability to create rich visual character journeys from often quite bleak surroundings, situations or circumstances.

About the book
Unlike Julia though, Leila has a very different background and starting point in her story. In 'Leila and the Blue Fox'. Happy at home in Croydon with older cousin Mona and her Amma, attending a local secondary school, she heads off to Norway for a long overdue visit with her mother during the summer holidays. 6 years separation and barely any meaningful contact have caused deep emotional wounds for Leila, and what she doesn’t yet know is that a little cat-sized blue-grey fluffy arctic fox, so vulnerable alone in the world, is going to become the antidote to her suffering and the source of a new found strength and happiness.

This is a story of two halves told in parallel through the thoughts of the fox and Leila’s narrative; all text beautifully inter-spliced with Tom’s stark/enigmatic artwork. The reader is following the story of the fox, based on a true story, as she migrates across the arctic, hungry and alone facing danger and peril; all whilst Leila tries to rekindle her relationship with her mother triggering her escape from the war in Syria and her journey as she herself migrated to the UK as a 6 year old child.

Leila’s mother is a Meteorologist and has found a new life that is paid well in Norway, somewhere that has welcomed her as a refugee, as a highly skilled female scientist - an opportunity that hadn’t seemed available to her in the UK. She has secured funding to tag and track the arctic fox Dr Amani Saleh has fondly named ‘Miso’ after her favourite food. It is into this world that she brings her estranged daughter. It is an adventure across the freezing arctic ice and ocean where Leila’s hurt, confusions and anger can swell with the storms and be laid bare with honesty like the midnight sun on a research boat surrounded by icebergs.

Leila's and Miso’s stories are intertwined - both are lost, have hope, don’t give up and find love in the end. There is vital messaging for kids in this book around territorial borders, rising temperatures, and something that isn’t often addressed so starkly - that a mother might not be maternal in her instincts - she may still love her child, want to provide for her child, but she must admit to herself and her child her limitations and both parties must accept that the holistic love that is needed to feel nurtured and belonging will be found perhaps within the safety of extended family. Such a tough reality for a child to come to terms with, but with honesty earlier down the line it can save thousands in therapy in the future. I should know, I had one of those.

Migration can be caused by war, famine, drought, tsunami, rejection, anything… as Leila’s mum says, “migration is necessary for survival. What Miso did, what we did, was leave home to find something better.”

Gorgeous end papers, book lists for further reading and a personal message from the author too. Very happy about my signed copy from my local Waterstones with the little paw prints along the edges... so cute!!

A beautiful story with stunning artwork. I am a big fan of Kiran Millwood Hargrave's novels including 'The Girl of Ink and Stars', 'The Island at the End of Everything', 'The Way Past Winter' and especially 'The Deathless Girls' but I did struggle to get past the first few chapters of 'Julia and the Shark'. This story, however, drew me in from the very beginning, with its authentic and gripping perspective of Leila, a refugee. The language is gorgeous, as always, and I was compelled to read on. I think reading this book on a screen made me enjoy it less than reading the physical copy, as it is so beautiful in the flesh, but I am thrilled to have been given the chance to dive into another of Kiran's stories.

Beautiful prose style with a moving story and relatable characters. The perfect story to settle in with, as the nights turn colder and winter arrives.

LEILA AND THE BLUE FOX is a book about complicated families. It's also about journeys, emotional and physical, and the beauty and brutality of the arctic. It's another gorgeous read, fully illustrated that's a great gift for a young reader.

The arctic is brought to vivid life, with the research vessel and trip across the ice fields. Alongside the exploration of the wild, we get two complicated mother-daughter relationships as the extremities of the trip increase the tensions over what is valued more.

Alongside being a delightful tale of travel and families, the book also touches on immigration and refugee routes. It discusses the lasting impact of the conflict that was fled, the routes taken, and detention centres. It's a great way of introducing those topics to younger readers, with further reading included at the back (as well as for the arctic animals.)

Like their previous collaboration, this book is illustrated throughout. The style looked different to JULIA AND THE SHARK. While this could be because I was reading this digitally and the previous in print, but it helped these books feel different. The art was almost stick figure-esque for the humans, and more detailed animals and background. It really helped give a sense of the humans being utterly alien in this arctic realm.

I look forward to their next collaboration.

With a decent life in London, with her aunt and cousin, Leila is flying all the way to Tromso to see her mother for the first time in the flesh in six years, and perhaps to work out just why the woman is such an absentee parent. The reason for that is that her climate studies career has taken a curveball, and she is now tracking an arctic fox, that is in the middle of a mahoosive migration of previously unseen length, right across the top of the world. Leila and her family know all about long, perilous journeys, having sought asylum from Syrian civil war. But which is the worst – such a trek for the humans, with borders and customs and ill-will to house migrants, or arctic animals, now the sea ice is on its way out big-time?

What we have is clearly a pro-migrant woke-fest, as well as the story of the fox and the people tracking it, but boy it is a fabulous story. Books often decide to force two completely different kinds of narratives into the same set of covers and hope they can be seen to mesh and reflect on each other – this does it so magically and so marvellously it really does feel like the one and the same story – that bombs in Damascus were needed to sort a fox’s marathon march, and the critter is needed to give closure to the itch Leila wants her family to finally scratch at last.

After Julia and the Shark, this creative (and real-life married) couple return with more splodgy illustrations, and yet a superlative eye for seeing a human story that can interact with that of an animal (or vice versa). This was yet again a delight, a very readable and thoroughly entertaining work that makes you think, and definitely at one point (you’ll know it when you get to it), gasp out loud. And you should get to it, for this is an inherently masterful piece, and worth four and a half stars whatever you think of its politics.

Leila and the Blue Fox is a wonderfully illustrated and constructed story of migration. How Millwood Hargrave and de Freston connect two vital stories in modern life is genius. Leila's story of separation from her mother by refugee status and a need to work blends beautifully against the backdrop of the true story of an arctic fox's migration across the northern polar region. Based on the true story of the fastest and longest recorded journey of a blue fox from Svalbard in Norway to Elliston Island in Canada de Freston's illustrations bring the movement of both ice and the fox to life. Millwood Hargarve's words capture the pain of leaving one's home country for Syrian Leila and her mother but also the difficulty of living beyond that journey. A need to work and be respected takes Leila's mother to Tromsø to work in the Norwegian Polar Scientific centre. By walking towards her career, however, she walks away from her daughter, allowing us to see the pain of dislocation at a variety of levels. The mother's obsession with her scientific career, similar to that portrayed in their first collaboration, remind us of what work can mean to a woman but also what great sacrifices might sometimes need to be made to do the work we love or to lead our families into safety and some level of prosperity.
A gorgeous book - I have already ordered my hard copy and it's one I see myself sharing with students for a long time to come. Excellent for Y7/G6 social studies as it deals with a number of appropriate curriculum connections.

What a super book. Ideal for Upper KS2 or lower KS3. The premise is surrounded by a little girl about to meet up with her mum who she hasn't seen in a very long time. Her world crashes when she realises her mum is more interested in trailing a blue fox than spending time with her estranged daughter.
It is not a dismal story as you begin to find out more why these 2 people are estranged; refugees from a country neither can forget. The descriptions of the journey and the fox and delightful!

Leila and the Blue Fox is a tale of discovery and parallel journeys. The interwoven stories and illustrations bring this incredible story to life and immerses the reader in Leila and Miso’s worlds. In a time where our world is changing so rapidly both physically and socially, I can’t wait to share Leila’s story with my class to inspire, inform and involve them in a world they will not have experienced before. A beautiful story that will be a firm class favourite I am sure.

Another fabulous book from the mind of Kiran Millwood Hargrave. I loved Julia and the Shark and was, therefore, very excited to learn of Leila and the Blue Fox. It didn't disappoint!

Leila's journey helps the reader understand both the climate issues facing our world currently and the plight of refugees displaced around the world

Her writing allows the imagination to see the story, with the settings being described beautifully and the characters written so well they become likeable and real.

I preordered the hard copy of this title after reading just the first chapter and cannot wait to see Tom de Freston's beautiful black, white and blue artwork along with tracing paper inserts when I receive it.

Hargrave never puts a foot wrong! Brilliant novel for young readers.

Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publishers for letting me access an advance copy in exchange for my honest feedback.

Leila and the Blue Fox
By Kiran Millwood Hargrave
Published by Hatchett Children’s Group

Another beautifully written story by the author of Julia and the shark, is the journey of Miso, the artic fox and Leila, whose mum has chosen her work over her motherhood. Both stories run parallel sharing Leila’s emotional story of lost love and jealousy and the dangers of migration. Full of stunning illustrations and compassionate vocabulary, this true story is an adventure to devour.

Leila has experienced the trauma’s of war, fleeing her home country, changes in her family dynamics and loosing her mum’s attention to the commitment of her job. But by embracing and following the fox’s journey and reading this through the eyes of the animal is so empowering. Exploring the ever changing issues of climate change, migration, immigration and mental health, Kieran Millwood Hargrave has written a real gem that sends tingles down your spine.

Based on the true story of an Arctic fox who walked from Norway to Canada in seventy-six days, a distance of two thousand miles, this compelling, emotional and beautifully illustrated story educated me. It also made me appreciate the true grit and passion scientists have for their work in this field, facing personal danger to save nature.

Joanne Bardgett - Year 3 teacher of littlies, lover of children’s books.
#Netgallery
#hatchettchildrensgroup