Leila and the Blue Fox: An enthralling, uplifting adventure story from the creators of JULIA AND THE SHARK

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Beautiful and moving, Leila and the Blue Fox delicately explores themes of migration, freedom and belonging, through a captivating tale that glistens with wonder.

At times we might feel resentful towards Leila's mother, but the novel remains uncritical and allows the characters to explore their relationship without authorial judgement. When Leila leaves the UK to see her Mum for the first time in six years, she never imagined they would be tracking a blue fox together, or that the journey would help her discover her Mum’s story and reasoning as they both heal from their own migration. Leila has experienced the trauma of war, fleeing her home country, as well as the change wrought in her family dynamics. The environmental changes in the Arctic mean that Miso is walking for more miles every day than usual. But once you get used to the jumps from Leila to Miso, the two stories begin to work together in pleasantly discordant harmony.I cannot wait to get my hands on the finished product, as I can only imagine how beautiful this book is going to be visually in it's final form. Alongside the stories of these journeys, the ever-changing issues of climate change, migration, immigration and mental health are also explored.

Although the illustrations in this copy of the book were in black and white, I can’t wait to see them alive in blue and grey, and with the tracing paper pages added.There are many things that contribute to the book's success - amazing, blue and white illustrations of the fox and its journey, a plethora of contemporary issues written in a accessible way, insets of poetic prose describing the fox's perspective that offset the plainer, narrative chapters - but the most important factor is Hargrave's simple, heartfelt prose.

Her interest in the changing arctic landscape and the threat to the wildlife of those areas is reflected in two of her recent novels for children; Leila and the Blue Fox and Julia and the Shark. She joins her in tracking an Arctic fox on an epic journey, and helps the expedition out with social media.When April and her father move to an uninhabited island in the Arctic Circle, she isn't expecting to meet a lonely polar bear - how can she help him? Yesterday a parent came over to tell me how impressed she was by the book fair and that you did a fabulous job of selling the books to the children first. Your words, like your reviews, bring books to life and give them a voice before the front cover is even turned. They can be up to seven metres long, and have indeed been known to live for four hundred years at least.