Alexandra Page and Stef Murphy follow their collaboration on The Worry Tiger with The Fire Fox, another revitalizing picture book centered on a sensitive kid who encounters a predatory animal that, improbably, offers comfort.
It's winter, and Freya's mom has taken her to a remote cabin: "Your dad loved this old place.... He used to say it was magical." Freya is skeptical: "Everything felt cold and empty with just the two of them." (That Freya's father has died is implicit, not articulated.) At her mom's suggestion, Freya, sled in tow, goes outside, where she sees "a strange light out on the snow." The light's source is a white fox who indicates that he wants Freya to follow him. They have an adventure across the snowy terrain, during which his tail emits what Freya calls "frosty fires spiraling into the starlit sky." When the fox suddenly runs away, he leaves Freya feeling, once again, "cold and empty"--until she looks up: "The sky was dancing with light!"
The Fire Fox is about facing challenges: grief, the elements, new frontiers. An author's note says the story was inspired by a Saami myth of the Northern Lights (revontulet, or "fox fires"), which complements the book's other Scandinavian aspect: hygge. Murphy distills this cozy quality in warm-toned indoor scenes and luminous outdoor tableaux heavy in blues and violets. The indoor-outdoor coziness interplay crystalizes in the book's final spread: Freya's mom reads to her in the cottage's window seat as the fireplace blazes, a yellow flame taking on the contours of the fox himself. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author