posted on 26 Oct 2017

The White Fox by Jackie Morris

This seemingly simple story isn’t lengthy but it’s packed with complex emotions and full of searching questions about loss, belonging and finding your way back home, physically and spiritually.

Sol is a boy whose mother has died and who is struggling to understand how he feels about this bereavement – why can’t he remember any longer what his mother was really like? He’s also out of place – he’s living in Seattle where his dad is working on the docks but he knows his real home his up north in the Arctic where his grandparents live. But his father can’t go back because of the memories it prompts – deep feelings of loss he can’t bring himself to face.

One day Sol’s dad tells him about a white Arctic Fox that’s been seen in the docks and Sol immediately identifies with the animal – another living creature trying to live in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sol is desperate to make contact with the fox and slowly wins its confidence with the help of peanut butter sandwiches.

Then suddenly the relationship is threatened when the dockers trap the fox and put it in a cage to wait for the police to turn up and take it away. Sol asks his father to help him save the fox and take them both back to Arctic where they belong – it will be the birthday present that the boys really wants more than anything else. Rather reluctantly his dad sees just how important this is to Sol and agrees to help – eventually driving them both north.

The long journey gives Sol and his father a chance to bond and to discuss the loss of their mother and wife and the two develop a deeper understanding of each other – something the reunion with his grandparents cements. Sol begins to learn the ways of his grandparents and their special relationship to the nature they live in and when they release the fox back into the wild Sol’s grandmother tells him that his mother had a special feeling for the Arctic Fox and that it was her ‘spirit animal’.

The messages of the book are clear about the need to grieve but also the necessity for the living to keep communicating – something which a real, organic relationship with the natural world can help us achieve.

Jackie Morris is a remarkable artist and the paintings that lavishly illustrate her story are an emotional feast of their own. She really sees her subjects – they are finely observed and detailed but, crucially, they are infused with emotion and the animals are brought to life with an empathy that is special to her.

Children and adults alike will love this book and it’s not one that should be categorised into an age-appropriate box but I guess most bookshops will keep it in the children’s book section. So if you’re a grown up it’s probably there that you’re going to have to search it out.

 

Terry Potter

October 2017