Foxlight
Reviewed By Grasshopper2 October 11, 2023
Author Katya Balen
Distributor: Bloomsbury Children's
ISBN: 9781526640420
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing. Imprint Bloomsbury Children's Books.
Release Date: October 2023
Website: https://www.bloomsbury.com
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Katya Balen has taken storytelling to a new level with this, her fourth novel, Foxlight. The language invokes the senses quite intensely. We feel the cold and the frost, we smell the “Mouse Soup,” and we feel the warmth generated when the twins curl up to sleep at night.
The setting for the story is the Light House, a home on the edge of the marshes where babies are brought who can’t be kept. Lissa was out looking for babies one night when she found the twins. They were curled up together wrapped around a fox’s tail, she said.
The story is told by Fen, one of the twins. Her sister is Rey…. fox’s names, says Lissa, because that’s where they were found. All the kids in the house have a story and a mother and write a note each Sunday to their family.
Rey and Fen draw pictures and blend with each other. They are quite different though. Rey loves to find seeds and plant them, tending the soil, while Fen always has her eyes on the horizon to the wildlands.
They are sure their mother will find them. Then one night, a fox sits under their bedroom window. Fen watches her sister and sees “all her thoughts come loose and spill into the space between us.”
The girls are sure this is a sign from their mother or at least a way to discover more about her. They decide to leave the haven of the Light House and follow the fox into the wildlands.
While containing elements of adventure, danger and survival, the connecting theme of sibling love and courage, draws the two to realise how the Light House was their home. The story moves smoothly and quickly with brief and lyrical language.