★ 12/14/2015
Appelt (The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp) and McGhee (Firefly Hollow) create an intoxicating blend of realism and myth in a novel involving a grieving child, ancient legends, and a mysterious fox. When Sylvie, whose burning wish is to run faster than she has ever run, disappears into a Vermont forest and is assumed dead, Jules, her younger sister, feels a sorrow like no other. Just as anguished are Jules’s father and their neighbor Elk, a veteran who knows what it’s like to lose a loved one. Then there is the fox, who seems to beckon 11-year-old Jules into the same Vermont woods. Breaking her father’s rule to never leave their property, Jules embarks on a quest both dangerous and marvelous. Evocative third-person narration brings the wonders of the wilderness to life and underscores the mysterious connections between humans, nature, and destiny. Appelt and McGhee offer just enough clues to keep readers absorbed while delving into the powerful emotions of two inexplicably connected creatures. Ages 10–14. Agent: Holly McGhee, Pippin Properties. (Mar.)
Maybe a Fox
Narrated by Alison McGhee
Kathi AppeltUnabridged — 3 hours, 54 minutes
Maybe a Fox
Narrated by Alison McGhee
Kathi AppeltUnabridged — 3 hours, 54 minutes
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Overview
Sylvie and Jules, Jules and Sylvie. Better than just sisters, more than best friends, they'd be identical twins if only they'd been born in the same year. And if only Sylvie wasn't such a fast-faster than fast-runner. But Sylvie is too fast, and when she runs to the river they're not supposed to go anywhere near to throw a wish rock just before the school bus comes on a snowy morning, she runs so fast that no one sees what happens...and no one ever sees her again. Jules is devastated, but she refuses to believe what all the others believe, that-like their mother-her sister is gone forever.
At the very same time, in the shadow world, a shadow fox is born-half of the spirit world, half of the animal world. She too is fast-faster than fast-and she senses danger. She's too young to know exactly what she senses, but she knows something is very wrong. And when Jules believes one last wish rock for Sylvie needs to be thrown into the river, the human and shadow worlds collide.
Writing in alternate voices-one Jules's, the other the fox's-Kathi Appelt and Alison McGhee tell the searingly beautiful tale of one small family's moment of heartbreak, a moment that unfolds into one that is epic, mythic, shimmering, and most of all, hopeful.
Editorial Reviews
Kathi Appelt and Alison McGhee’s collaborative novel entwines the story of one girl’s grief with that of a fox with a rare, but important destiny. Among Jules and Sylvie Sherman’s dad’s Do Not rules is that they are never to go near the Slip, a dangerous point where the Whippoorwill River surges beneath the ground before reemerging downstream. However, this wild, watery place in the woods behind their Vermont home holds a particular allure: it is the perfect place to throw wish rocks. Jules, 11, is a rock hound who loves sorting her collection into “Sherman Galaxies” of igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rock, but wish rocks are a category unto
themselves. These rocks are for writing a burning wish that might just come true when cast into the Slip. Sylvie, 12, is a runner whose burning wish is to run faster; but one morning when she doesn’t return from a last-minute dash to the Slip, Jules can only find a tree root poking out of the path, followed by a gash in the snow that ends at the river. And just like that, Sylvie is gone forever.
Elsewhere in the forest, a fox gives birth to three kits and knows that her little girl, Senna, is Kennen—spiritually connected to another living creature. As Senna grows and learns “a thousand years of fox knowledge” from the smells and sounds around her, Jules and her father struggle to cope with Sylvie’s death, their grief compounded by the lingering loss of the girls’ mother a few years earlier. Jules runs through what-if and if-only scenarios that would have kept her sister alive, alternately feeling despair and anger over what has transpired. Her inability to control her emotions rings true, and readers will empathize with her desire to find her feet in a world “After Sylvie.”
Despite the heavy nature of the story, it maintains a forward momentum and resists taking on a brooding atmosphere. This is due in part to the way the narrative shifts, drawing on different characters’ experiences with death. The girls’ friend Sam had a burning wish for his brother, Elk, to return safely from Afghanistan; though he did, Elk’s best friend did not, and Jules and Elk form a quiet camaraderie in their search for solace. Rules and rituals evolve to remember departed loved ones, create order, and stay safe:
Jules sorts her rocks, her dad devises more Do Nots.
Throughout, Jules chases the question, “Where do you go when you die?” It's a query she and Sylvie used to answer with the Maybe game, postulating “Maybe you fly away like a bluebird” or maybe you simply shrink until no one can see you. Once Sylvie dies, this question is joined by another: why did Sylvie want to run so fast? Jules’ sister had always kept this a secret, but both answers, as it turns out, are wrapped up in Senna.
Many readers will quickly guess the connection between Senna, Sylvie, and Jules, but the exact implications to the plot are not as easily discerned. Additionally, the concept of Kennen imparts another avenue for the authors to explore grief, offering a comforting spiritual explanation that is not tied to religion. While this may not resonate with everyone, the fantasy element inherent to Senna’s story helps keep the book’s serious aspects from overwhelming young readers.
Neither author is a stranger to writing poignant animal stories that tackle weighty themes, as Appelt proved in her Newbery Honor book, The Underneath (2008), and McGhee showed in Firefly Hollow (2015). Together, they create a delicate world that effortlessly impresses itself upon the reader. It is a world where bad things can happen for no good reason, where catching sight of a fox means luck, where love transcends all boundaries, and maybe death doesn’t have to be an ending.
Father says eleven-year-old Jules is as strong as a rock,but Jules doesn’t feel as strong as her sister, Sylvie, who can run like the wind. Jules is jealous of Sylvie, until the day Sylvie disappears and everyone assumes she fell into the slip, the treacherous gorge in the Whippoorwill River. What Jules doesn’t know is that when Sylvie died, a Kennen fox was born as her spirit guide. As Jules faces life after Sylvie, she ventures out into the forbidden woods where she bonds with the fox, who guides her to the location of a mystical grotto and reveals the headband Sylvie wore the day she died, helping Jules find closure. Although etched with sadness, the novel artfully blends the worlds of animals and humans through the alternating voices of the fox and Jule. It is bound to leave readers full of hope. This title will appeal to tweens who have experienced a loss, as well as teachers and librarians familiar with the work of this award-winning author team.
Recommended
Eleven-year-old Jules, a budding geologist, and hertwelve-year-old sister Sylvie, the fastest kid in school, live withtheir father in rural Vermont. Because the girls’ mother died when Juleswas small, her memories, frustratingly, are dim. She does remember theawful sight of their mother collapsing onto the kitchen floor, and thensix-year-old Sylvie sprinting as fast as she could to get help, but it was toolate. And now Sylvie is the one who has disappeared: one morning before schoolshe takes off running in the woods and never comes back; they think she trippedinto the river and was swept away. At the same time, a fox kit, Senna, is born,with the instinctual desire to watch over and protect Jules. Because foxes areconsidered good luck, Jules’s occasional glimpses of Senna bring her some peace.A catamount, too, is rumored to be in the woods, along with a bear, and atbook’s climax, the human, animal, and (most affectingly) spirit worldscollide and converge. This is a remarkably sad story that offers upmeasures of comfort through nature, family, community, and theinterconnectedness among them. The sisters’ best friend, Sam, who ishimself grieving for Sylvie and desperately longs to see that catamount,is happy to have his brother Elk home from Afghanistan, but Elk’s ownbest friend Zeke didn’t return, leaving Elk bereft; he and Jules mourn theirlosses in the woods. Zeke’s grandmother is the one to whom Sylvie ran whentheir mother collapsed and who now brings soup for Jules, and for her kind,stoic, heartbroken father. A good cry can be cathartic, and this bookabout nourishing one’s soul during times of great sadness does the trick.
Eleven-year-oldJules and her older sister, Sylvie, know that the Slip, the dangerous placewhere the river near their house flows into a deep cavern, has been declaredoff limits by their father; the warning, however, has often gone unheeded asthe two girls go there to throw “wish” stones. One morning Sylvie leaves Julesbehind and runs to the Slip to make a quick wish, and she doesn’t return.Jules’ time is then separated into Before Sylvie and After Sylvie as shegrieves for her sister and tries to hold off the guilt she feels about Sylvie’sdeath. As Jules wanders, lost, through her days, she often catches sight of ared fox that she feels a connection to; in fact, the fox is a Kennen, a spiritmeant to help humans. The book keenly conveys Jules’ pain at the loss of Sylvieand realistically complements it with absolute fury at her sister’s actions.The chapters that focus on the fox are warmly narrated, and the fox itself isgently curious and then genuinely empathetic toward Jules. A subplot involvingthe return of the older brother of Jules best friend from Afghanistan showsthat grief manifests in many ways, a message that is underlined by the howl ofthe fox’s family after she sacrifices herself for Jules. This is a quietexploration of what it is to continue life after the death of a loved one.
5Q 3P M J
Sisters eleven-year-oldJules and twelve-year-old Sylvie are very close but very different. While Jules loves her rock collection,Sylvie's "burning wish" is to run faster. Their mother died when theywere very young, and the family still feels her absence. Their close-knit ruralVermont community is supportive and they see reflections of their own grief ina neighbor who has returned from serving in Afghanistan without his bestfriend. Then, Sylvie disappears, leavingJules and their dad to pick up the pieces. At the same time, a fox named Sennais born. Senna's story is interwoven with Jules's and they connect in asatisfying, though sad, conclusion.
This story has a lot of moving parts and would not work inthe hands of lesser authors; however, Appelt and McGhee weave a magicallylyrical tale marked by sparse, simple prose. Jules and Sylvie's best friend,Sam, could use a bigger part in the story. His obsession with finding acatamount is the seed out of which a companion novel could grow. This is aquiet novel with a quiet cover. Giventhe authors and the quality of the writing, it seems likely that there will berenewed attention when awards season comes around. Not all young readers willbe drawn to it, but for fans of Katherine Patterson's Bridge to Terabithia (Thomas Crowell,1977), this will be anappealing and magical read.—Kristin Anderson.
★ 05/01/2016
Gr 4–6—Eleven-year-old Jules and her 12-year-old sister Sylvie are very close and dependent on each other, especially since their mother died when they were very young. So when Sylvie suddenly disappears and is presumed dead, Jules and her father are left to cope with her absence and their lives "after Sylvie." At the moment of Sylvie's death, an unborn fox receives her spirit and is born a "kennen," an animal who has been sent to help a human. In alternating chapters—Jules's point of view written by Appelt and Senna the fox's by McGhee—seemingly unrelated pieces of the plot, such as Jules's fascination with rocks, her neighbor Elk's grief over the loss of his best friend, and Sylvie's need to run faster, are woven together against a magnificent background of forest and river. This is a book of maybes, of what might be, of possible sightings of rare animals, of mysticism and dreams of what might have been. Although there is an underlying tone of tragedy, McGhee reads with great gentleness and warmth, enfolding listeners in the sadness, anger, hope, and strength of the characters. The result is a thought-provoking and moving book that captivates and tugs at the heartstrings. VERDICT Highly recommended for intermediate and middle school collections. ["Both raw and hopeful and [a book] that readers won't soon forget": SLJ 1/16 starred review of the S. & S./Atheneum book.]—MaryAnn Karre, Binghamton, NY
★ 01/01/2016
Gr 4–6—Twelve-year-old Sylvie, the older of the two Sherman sisters, is the runner, the fast, impetuous one. A year younger, Jules is a rock collector who takes her time to think things through. The morning of the last snowfall of the season in rural Vermont, Jules and Sylvie build a miniature snow family before getting ready for school. Sylvie wants to be fast, "so fast that…" but she never finishes that sentence, and Jules isn't sure why her sister is so focused on speed. After playing in the snow, Sylvie darts off into the woods to throw a wishing rock into the Slip—and that's the last time anyone sees her. At that moment, a fox kit is born. One of a litter of three, this kit is a "kennen," a being that has an understanding that others do not possess and a destiny that it cannot escape. It's tied to Jules and to Sylvie. Although Sylvie's body is not found, everyone knows she drowned in the river and is gone. Jules thinks of it as "the After Sylvie" time, and she and her father grieve together, struggling to cobble together some hope for the future. There are some heavy elements in this beautifully written middle grade novel: the death of Sylvie and Jules's mother several years before the story begins, the devastating disappearance/death of Sylvie, and the grieving of a neighbor who was deployed with his best friend to Afghanistan. But despite these sad events, the descriptions of rural Vermont, the sense of caring within Jules's community, and the relationship between the two girls and their father make for a book that is both raw and hopeful and one that readers won't soon forget. Through a dual narrative—one from Jules, the other from the "kennen" fox kit—the authors convey an understanding that grief is a journey and that a person can, even after terrible loss, feel the warm sun, smile once again, and make wishes for the future. VERDICT Highly recommended for all middle grade collections.—Kathy Kirchoefer, Henderson County Public Library, NC
Alison McGhee is a talented writer, but these skills haven’t transitioned well to her narration of this co-authored audiobook. The alternating human and animal stories—character driven and and slow paced—require a gifted narrator to engage listeners. McGhee’s reading is self-conscious, often stilted and sentimental. The protagonist of the human story is Jules, who grieves the sudden, shocking death of her sister, Sylvie. McGhee voices this sensitive plot with a breathy rhythm that may express grief but doesn’t do Jules’s strong emotions justice. The secondary story follows a growing fox cub, and listeners must suspend disbelief to trust the authors’ magical realism and enjoy the lyrical words that connect the two stories. Perhaps this audio would have had better success with a more accomplished narrator. S.W. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
2015-12-08
A fox kit born with a deep spiritual connection to a rural Vermont legend has a special bond with 11-year-old Jules. Jules' sister, Sylvie, just a year older, longs for their mother, who died suddenly. Sylvie is a runner, while Jules' focus is on the intricacies of rocks and stone. When, in the opening chapters, impulsive Sylvie makes a dash to throw a wishing rock into the Slip, a treacherous place where the river drops under the ground, it is Jules who discovers that Sylvie tripped on a tree root, sliding in March snow to her death. Meanwhile, Jules' kind friend Sam longs to see a live catamount, a rare eastern cougar—and aches for his war-veteran brother, who mourns Zeke, who didn't return from Afghanistan. Jules and Sylvie's speculative question game asks what happens after death: "Maybe you turn into wind. / Maybe you turn into stars." Magical elements—a legend about brothers who chanced the Slip for a girl's love; an elusive grotto; spirit animals sent to complete a task unfinished for a human—all confer transcendent dimensions on the story. Appelt and McGhee's rich, polished narrative invites the reader to experience the world both as Jules and as the fox. Intriguing as a story of connection to the animal world and, for perceptive readers, filled with solace. (Fantasy. 9-13)
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940170740390 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Simon & Schuster |
| Publication date: | 03/08/2016 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
| Age Range: | 10 - 13 Years |
Read an Excerpt
Maybe a Fox
From under her covers, Jules Sherman listened for her sister, Sylvie, to walk out of their room. As soon as she did, Jules slipped out of bed and slammed the door behind her. She was still angry. Who did Sylvie think she was? The day before, Sylvie had once again left her at the bottom of the front porch steps and run into the woods, disappeared, her wavy red-brown hair swishing down her back, ignoring Jules’s pleas to wait up, for once just wait up.
Sylvie was always doing that. Taking off. So fast. Time after time, leaving Jules standing there. Alone.
Jules’s cheeks flushed with a bright blaze of anger. Here she was standing alone again, this time in the echo of the slammed bedroom door. The morning was still early. A gray dimness came in through their window, aided only by a thin beam from the hallway that slipped in under the door.
Even in the shallow light Jules could still see Sylvie’s favorite T-shirt, along with the sweater and jeans Sylvie planned to wear that day, all laid out on her sister’s bed. Jules hesitated, then grabbed the shirt, went straight to the windowsill and in one swift motion, swept all her rocks into the T-shirt, using it as a kind of basket. Ha! Sylvie would hate that. Her precious, precious T-shirt.
The shirt was thin and soft and smelled like cotton and coconut shampoo and Sylvie. Jules took a deep breath. Sylvie loved coconut shampoo. In fact, she loved anything that smelled like coconut—coconut ice cream, coconut candy, coconut candles, including the one Sam had given her for Christmas. Sylvie said coconut was her “signature scent.”
Jules wondered what her own signature scent was. One thing for sure, it wasn’t coconut.
She dumped the rocks onto her bed and then did the same thing with the rocks from her bookcase, the rocks on top of her dresser, and the rocks from the wooden box her dad had made her for Christmas. The rocks spilled across the mountains and valleys of her sheets and blanket. She tossed her pillow aside and scooped the rocks into the empty space left open by the missing pillow.
Jules pulled the tiny hand lens that she wore on a lanyard around her neck out from under her pajama top. Her dad had only recently given it to her. The lens was about the size of a quarter, and a bright LED light shone out from it.
“Every rock hound should have one,” Dad had told her.
The lens magnified everything by ten times. When Jules held it against the surface of the rocks, she could see the striations where the different elements had folded into one another, or the smooth, shiny edges where the rock had been either chiseled by a pick or broken apart by some bigger force, maybe a glacier, as if the rock had been rubbed smooth by thousands of tons of sliding ice.
Not for the first time, her small LED light felt like a miniature sun, shining down on her own constellation of rock planets. Her bed was the galaxy, the Sherman Galaxy, bounded only by sheets and a warm fleece blanket.
Now she could begin to sort the rocks. First into the three categories: igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. Then by size within each category. Then into vertical rows, horizontal rows, and circles. As she sorted and arranged, she felt herself growing calmer. She whispered their names aloud as she worked. “Marble. Slate. Schist. Quartzite. Sandstone. Flint. Dolomite.”
There was a fourth category of rocks too, one that didn’t have a scientific name. Wish rocks. Rocks for the river. These were rocks that she didn’t display. Instead, she kept them in an old striped sock that once belonged to Dad. It was tucked in the back of her and Sylvie’s closet, next to their shoes and boots.
Most of the wish rocks she had found herself, either by spotting them along the trail, or lately with the help of her special pick hammer, an Estwing E13P. It had taken her forever to save enough to buy the hammer, and even then it had to be special ordered by Mrs. Bowen at the Hobbston Hardware Store in town. Not only that, but Dad wouldn’t let her buy it without also buying a pair of safety goggles.
“You want to be safe, don’t you, Jules?” Sylvie had asked her. Of course she did, and besides, no true rock hound would be caught chipping away at rocks without a pair of safety goggles. Jules knew that. But it was hard to wait until she had enough money for both the hammer and the goggles. And then Sylvie did something surprising—she let Jules borrow the additional ten dollars so she wouldn’t have to wait any longer to order the hammer. Sylvie was always doing stuff like that.
Remembering the goggles made Jules feel a little less angry with Sylvie. But not completely. She was still sick of being left behind. She snapped the beam of light off and tucked the lens back under her shirt.
She concentrated on her rocks, the ones spread before her in neat rows on her bed, and reached for one of her very favorites from the entire collection. Her fingers first hesitated over the small chunk of dark green-black marble. Then she remembered that Sylvie had brought that one back for her from a school field trip to the Danby marble quarry. Marble, slate, and granite were the official state rocks of Vermont, where they lived. Jules loved that piece of marble, its cool smoothness. She loved to press it against her cheek.
But not this morning. She wouldn’t choose the marble today. Not when she was angry at Sylvie. Instead she chose the piece of blue-gray slate that she herself had found at the edge of the Whippoorwill River, the river that ran along the edge of their property. She pressed her fingertips against its sharp edge. This would be a good skipping rock. Not that she would ever dream of sending it away across the water, never to be seen again. There were rocks for the river and rocks for the Sherman Galaxy. This one was a keeper, a blue-gray slate planet.
“Knock-knock!”
Sylvie, outside the door. She never knocked with her hand, just her voice. Who did that? Right now Sylvie’s voice-knock bugged Jules as much as being left in the dust.
“Go away.”
“I can’t. This is my room too, remember? And I have to get dressed.”
Oops. The T-shirt! Sylvie’s precious Flo-Jo T-shirt. Flo-Jo was Sylvie’s hero, Florence Griffith-Joyner. She held the record for the fastest women’s hundred-meter sprint in history, and Jules knew that Sylvie dreamed of beating that record. She also knew that was one of the reasons that Sylvie was always running. But knowing it didn’t make it any easier. Sometimes Jules felt like the only side she ever saw of Sylvie was her back, growing smaller and smaller as she shot down the track or the trail or wherever else she ran. Jules smoothed out the T-shirt as best she could and returned it to its spot on Sylvie’s bed. Sylvie always made her bed and laid out her clothes the second she got up. Unlike Jules, whose bed was always a mess. Especially messy when she did a major sorting of rocks. Like now.
“Knock-knock,” came Sylvie’s voice again. “Come on, Jules, let me in.”
“There’s no lock,” Jules called. “Duh.”
There had never been a lock on their door. Even though she was upset, Jules still had to admire that Sylvie hadn’t just barged right in the way she, Jules, might have done. The doorknob turned and there was Sylvie, tall and skinny in her pajamas. She got straight to the point.
“Why are you mad?”
“I’m not,” Jules lied.
Sylvie just pointed at the rocks laid out on Jules’s bed, a sure sign that Jules was trying to calm herself down.
“Come on. Tell me. I’m your one and only sister.”
“Stop.”
“What? I am, aren’t I? Unless you’ve got a secret other sister somewhere?”
Sylvie sat down on Jules’s bed, careful not to disturb the rocks. Then she sidled her pointer finger bit by bit, like a snake, through the rumpled blankets toward Jules. She had been doing that ever since they were tiny, and it always made Jules laugh. Jules looked away so she wouldn’t start to soften.
Sylvie abandoned the finger-snake and instead picked up the one piece of obsidian in Jules’s collection. She hefted the small polished oval in her hand.
“I remember when Mom gave you this,” she said. “It was your fourth birthday. You were already crazy about rocks.” She rolled her eyes in a what-a-weird-little-kid-you-were kind of way. “Seriously, what four-year-old kid is a rock fiend?”
That was it! Jules snatched the obsidian from Sylvie’s hand. Once again, Sylvie had invoked Mom. Obsidian was caused by volcanoes, an eruption of steam and gas so furious that it melted the earth itself into this hard, shiny object. Right then, Jules felt hard and shiny.
“You and Dad,” she said. “You’re like a secret club.”
“What are you talking about?”
“When the two of you get going about Mom. How do you think it makes me feel?”
Sylvie looked puzzled. Jules kept going. “It’s like you remember everything about her!” Jules rubbed her thumb along the smooth surface of the obsidian. “But me? I hardly remember anything. All I see when I try to picture her is her hair, which is exactly like . . . like . . .”
She stopped talking and carefully placed the obsidian back on her bed, back into the vertical category of igneous rocks.
“Mine,” Sylvie finished the sentence. “The same color as mine. Is that what you were going to say?”
Jules nodded. Yes. That was what she was going to say.
What she wasn’t going to say: that no matter how hard she tried, her memories of their mom grew smaller and smaller, each one folding in on itself, so that not even her 10x magnifier could see them.
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