Leila and the Blue Fox by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

Twelve-year-old Leila Saleh is on her way to meeting up with her mother, Amani Saleh, a meteorologist and researcher in Norway. 

Leila has been living with her aunt and her cousin, seventeen-year-old Mona in her aunt's terraced home in Croydon, England for the past six years. All of them fled out of Damascus, Syria when Leila was just five-years-old.

At the airport in Tromso, Norway, her flight guardian guides Leila through immigration. But Leila's mom isn't there to meet her. Instead it is her mom's friend, Liv Nilsen. They are quickly joined by Liv's daughter Britt, who has just arrived from her school in Bergen. The drive to her mother's apartment is filled with surprises for Leila: the huge mountain and the tunnel under the sea, the Arctic Cathedral. In the apartment Liv shares with Leila's mother, she shows Leila a picture of a fox they have named Miso and have been following. Liv tells Leila that her mother couldn't meet her at the airport because she had a meeting regarding funding for studying this animal. 

Later that evening, Leila meets her mother in a restaurant along with Liv and Britt. In the restaurant, Leila's mother reveals that their funding to study the Arctic fox they've been following and recently put a tracking collar on, has been approved. Liv tells the group that the fox, who they've named Miso, was born in a litter on a beach in Svalbard and "has been walking for weeks now, across the sea ice, miles at a time, going north and then west." She has walked almost a thousand miles in one month. Liv states "She's proving animals can adapt through migration even in these most extreme times." The new funding will allow Liv and Amani to track Miso by boat, "...observing her interactions with other animals, seeing whether her coat changes color or her eating habits change." Then in a stunning turn of events, Leila's mother asks if Leila and Britt want to accompany them on the boat! The two girls agree, leading the four to have a remarkable journey of discovery and healing.

Discussion

Leila and the Blue Fox is a story that focuses on the strained relationship between a young girl and her mother, set against the backdrop of research in the high Arctic. The novel incorporates two narratives: that of Leila and her mother, and that of a blue fox, Miso as she journeys across the Arctic ice towards food and finding a mate.

Leila Saleh and her mother Amani's backstory is gradually revealed in the novel: Leila was born in Damascus and they fled the war in Syria when she was only five years old. Her father remained behind in Syria but Leila, her mother, her aunt and her cousin Mona all left. Even though it was seven years ago, Leila remembers the experience. "She remembers it all. The night they left Damascus, bombs lighting the sky like fireworks. Basbousa, terrified in his basket, handed to their neighbor who would not leave. The car into the hills, a truck to the border. The smell of gasoline, the sound of crying, energy bars like sawdust in her throat. Amma chanting....Walking awake, walking half-asleep, being carried, walking always in the dark. More cars, more trucks, a van where Mona had a panic attack...The boat...the boat." 

Leila, her mother along with Amma and Mona settled in Croydon in south London. However, Leila's mother, a meteorologist who studies climate change, was unable to find work in England and so she moved to Noway. There she got a job at the Tromso Arctic Institute. The result was that Leila has not seen her mom in six years. This long absence has created feelings of abandonment and intense anger in Leila who wonders why her mother left her. The long absence seems somewhat contrived: was Amani not able to find even a week to return to London to visit her daughter? Leila believes it is because Norway is "as far away from home as she can be. Because everything is different, from the food to the clothes to the weather, because she doesn't want to remember home. And really, though no one says it, because she doesn't want to remember Leila."

Leila's anger and sense of abandonment are intensified when she arrives in Tromso, Norway only to learn that her mother is not at the airport to meet her but instead has chosen to attend a meeting for research funding. When Leila meets her mother at the restaurant she refuses her touch and is angered by her mother's use of her childhood name of "La-La". Six years have passed and no one calles Leila that pet name anymore. To Leila, her mother's "...work was clearly more important to her than being a mom." Later on Leila states that her mother "...was following the fox anywhere ti led, when she hadn't even come to find Leila, even though she knew exactly where she was." 

A chance for healing of the rift between mother and daughter happens when Amani and Liv invite their daughters to accompany them on a boat trip as they track the blue fox Miso's journey westward across the ice. The journey towards healing between Amma and Leila is mirrored in Miso's struggle to find a safe place to live.

While on the boat tracking Miso, Leila continues to struggle with her feelings regarding her mother, both hating and loving her. In London, she was able to hide her hurt, keeping busy with life. "But now Leila is here with her, feeling her warmth and hearing her laugh, the absence feels sharper, ragged. Being with her has made all that time without her far more painful." 

In close quarters on the boat, Leila finds herself drawn into her mother's research and even understanding her mother's love of the Arctic. She becomes the research team's social media manager, posting information about Miso's journey on Twitter. Becoming involved helps Leila begin to understand her mother. But being on the boat with her mother, experiencing her also bring back memories of a life lost - in Damascus. "With them arrive feelings so big she can't fit them all inside her head: sadness and happiness and the feeling Britt described, of a lost life, a half life it is easier to forget."

Both Liv's daughter Britt and Leila struggle to cope with mothers who appear to be self-absorbed and disconnected from their daughters. Britt tells Leila that her mother never asks questions about her boarding school and doesn't know about her friends, the books or music she likes. Britt tells Leila her mother "...knows the names of every whale but nothing about me." Leila can relate to Britt's pain because of her own mother's focus on Miso and her research and the fact that she won't tell Amma and Mona about the research and about being on the boat.

When a crisis sees Leila's mother arrested by the Canadian Coast Guard and Leila must tell Amma and Mona what has been happening, "She realizes she loves Mum, but she loves Mona and Amma as well. That they are more than enough." And Leila tells Mona she plans to return to London. Eventually when Amina returns she finally reaches out to Leila explaining why she left England and never returned. Amina reveals that she didn't fit in and didn't feel safe. She decided to stay in Norway because it allowed her to support Leila and her aunt and cousin. "I didn't leave because of you...I left for you. To provide for you, as well as for myself..." 

This helps Leila understand what has happened and why, and helps her to come to terms with her feelings of loss and abandonment. But it also doesn't explain why Amani did not return at least for holiday visits therefore seems shallow and incomplete. Nor does Leila question why her mother never returned for at least a holiday visit. However, she does ask her mother to visit "even once a year" which she agrees to do.

The author does tie together Leila's family's "migration" with that of Miso's. Leila's mother tells her,  "We had to leave our home, because of war. But what if it was because of water, or lack of it? Or the weather? Patterns are changing. Miso's journey proves that migration is necessary for survival. What Miso did, what we did, was leave home to find something better."  The message for young readers is that refugees often do not want to leave their homes, but come because they must, because they are seeking a safer, better life.

Miso's journey across the Arctic ice from Svalbard a group of islands in the Barents Sea is based on the real life journey of a female Arctic fox named Anna who travelled from 3,500 km from Norway's Svalbard archipelgo to Ellesmere Island in Canada. Anna began her journey on March 26, 2018 and arrived arrived in Canada on July 1. The arctic blue fox had  been fitted with a radio collar in 2017 and was tracked by researchers at the Norwegian Polar Institute. The fox travelled via sea ice and across glaciers. Her journey demonstrated how important sea ice is to animals in the Arctic.  Although Miso's narrative is short, there are lovely illustrations by Tom de Fresten.

This novel was well written and will definitely appeal to middle grade readers interested in animals and the High Arctic as well as young refugees seeking a better life.

Book Details:

Leila and the Blue Fox by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
New York: Union Square Kids      2022
243 pp. 

Shattered by Melody Carlson

Cleo is almost eighteen and a senior. She and her friend, Lola, want to attend a Christian concert in the city, at the Coliseum. Cleo is hoping to drive her father's car to the concert, but Cleo's mother is having none of it. When Cleo balks, her mother offers to come with her and Lola, sacrificing her own night out at her best friend's bachelorette party. Cleo doesn't want her mother to do this. She wants to go with her friend, not her mother. 

This concert is special to Cleo and Lola because it is Lola's last day in  the city. Lola's parents divorced last summer and  her mother Vera, is taking a new job in San Diego.The concert is one last time for Cleo and Lola to do something together before Lola moves.

Cleo is completely frustrated because her mother will not allow her any space to try new things and spread her wings as a young adult. She feels that her mother is suffocating her. But no matter how much she argues or tries to convince her mother of this, she will not let go. " 'There will always be something,' I say a bit too loudly. 'There will be car wrecks and epidemics and murders and all sorts of horrible things happening all over the planet, Mom. But that does not mean they'll happen to me. Don't you get that? Someday you will have to let me go! ' "

Upset at her mother's suffocating ways, Cleo decides to plan to attend the concert without her mother's knowledge. If she can't drive, Cleo decides she and Lola will take public transit to the concert. Although Cleo feels guilty about disobeying her mother and lying to her, her desire to be more independent overrules her feelings. When she and Lola arrive at the concert, Cleo pushes aside her feeling of guilt and tries to enjoy herself. After the concert they arrive safely home and Cleo decides she will confess to her mother what she did in the morning. Cleo never gets that chance because, incredibly,  her mother is killed in a carjacking outside the Coliseum that night!

From the messages left on her phone, Cleo learns that her mother returned home early and when she found Cleo and Lola gone, she drove to the Coliseum to pick them up. Her mother arrived early and while driving around waiting for the concert to end, she was carjacked and murdered. Cleo concludes that if she had not disobeyed her mother and gone to the concert, her mother would be alive today. Cleo truly believes she is responsible for her mother's death. It is her darkest secret that she will never reveal to anyone. She is overwhelmed with grief and pain and in order to cope with this pain Cleo begins taking tranquilizers. She becomes addicted to the prescription drugs and is soon buying drugs from a local dealer.

But there are several people in Cleo's life who are there to help her - her mother's sister, Kellie, who arrives shortly after the tragedy. Although Cleo treats her with disdain at first, calling her "slightly functional"  and tries to push her away, it is Kellie who is Cleo's saviour. Eventually things spiral downward to the point that Cleo is hospitalized. Her Aunt Kellie confronts her regarding her addiction based on her experience with her brother Kevin. She discovers Cleo's secret and helps her move forward with her grieving, encouraging her to experience the pain of her mother's death and telling her that she is not responsible for what happened to her mother. Cleo also meets a guy, Daniel Crane who she's been interested in since her sophomore year,  from her school. He expresses a sudden interest in her and it is this relationship that provides some of the impetus for Cleo to get well. 

Discussion

The storyline in Shattered  is very contrived, with Cleo's mother's murder the plot device that moves the story from one about a controlling mother to teen addiction. It is overly melodramatic and stretches credibility. Cleo's mother was highly dysfunctional and it was understandable that Cleo would try to break free of her mother's suffocating grip on her life. Cleo goes out for the first time in her life and her mother is murdered - making for a very contrived and almost unbelievable plot. In most normal families, what would be happening the night of the concert would be discussed well before the date. In the case of things happening last minute, Cleo's mother could have driven her daughter and her friend to the concert. She could have picked her up afterwards. This is what normal parents do if the circumstances are such that there is a safety issue. And the vast majority of teens attend concerts without anything dire happening.

It is interesting that in the front page of the book, Carlson indicates that "some of the anecdotal illustrations in this book are true to life and are included with the permission of the persons involved. All other illustrations are composites of real situations, and any resemblance....." While this may be true, many teens would find it hard to identify with the potential lessons in the book, given the strange circumstances they are framed within. Framing these issues under such extreme circumstances, detracts from the goal of the book and that of the publisher NavPress which as stated in the front of the book is "to helping people grow spiritually and enjoy lives of meaning and hope through personal and group resources that are biblically rooted, culturally relevant, and highly practical."

Despite the ridiculous turn of events, there are some good issues that can be discussed with teens; "helicopter parenting", teen independence, obedience, lying, prescription drug abuse and family life.

Book Details:
A Daughter's Regret. Shattered by Melody Carlson
NavPress 2011
199 pp.

Beneath My Mother's Feet by Amjed Qamar

Beneath My Mother's Feet is a beautifully written novel which examines the role of women and their expectations in Pakistani society.

Fourteen-year-old Nazia lives with her family in Gizri colony, a working-class neighborhood in southern Karachi. She attends Gizri School for Girls with her friends Maleeha and Saira and is preparing for her arranged marriage which is to happen soon. She hopes to be able to continue her studies once married.

The story opens with Nazia arriving home from school to find that her father Abbu has been injured at his construction job. In the weeks following Abbu's accident, it becomes apparent that Nazia's family will have a difficult time surviving. At first they are able to subsist on the money her Amma saved from her sewing jobs. But with no one to help support the family things change for the worse quickly.

Amma pulls Nazia out of school to watch her younger siblings, ten-year-old Isha and four-year-old Mateen, while she cleans homes in the Defense Housing area - a section of residential homes owned by Karachi's elite. Amma is now a masi - a servant who cleans the homes of the wealthy. The work is hard for Amma so instead of watching her younger siblings, Nazia also begins to clean homes. The work is dirty, exhausting and endless, and pays poorly.

Nazia wants to finish school but with each month that she is forced to stay and help her mother, her dream of getting an education seems to be slipping away. Further disaster strikes when her jahez (dowry) is stolen, her father loses the rent money and then disappears and her family loses their home. Due to the family's precarious financial situation and the loss of her dowry, her Uncle Tariq breaks her engagement to his son Salam. While Nazia's mother takes the loss of the engagement hard, Nazia herself is not so sure that this is a bad thing.

Gradually Nazia comes to the realization that she has choices and that she doesn't always have to just accept what "fate" will bring her. "When did Nazia have the right to start thinking on her own? Was there some unwritten law that said even when things were going wrong, when the choices that her parents made led to one disaster after another, she had to ride the waves, holding her breath?"  She has the choice to continue her studies with the help of her friend Maleeha. She has the choice to leave her life of servitude with the help of a former teacher. Her life isn't necessarily dictated by fate. And so when Nazia helps a servant boy, Sherzad flee from a life of servitude she herself makes a different choice. Although her Uncle returns and arranges for her to return to Punjab with him and his son for their wedding, Nazia decides upon a different path for herself.

Discussion

In Beneath My Mother's Feet, author Amjed Qamar has crafted characters with substance and realism. The central character, Nazia is a teenager who we see is in the process of maturing and thinking for herself. Nazia loves her father. At first she refuses to accept Amma's opinion that he is lazy and deceitful and has shirked his responsibilities as a provider for his family. Nazia considers his situation and his actions carefully before she comes to a conclusion about him. She is intelligent and as she is exposed to the world around her, Nazia begins to realize that she has choices in her life. She matures from a young teen who simply follows her mother to someone who has the courage to made a decision that might be in her best interests but which will also conflict with what her mother wants for her.

Nazia's Amma is also a beautifully crafted character. Amma is portrayed as a long suffering wife who has struggled to cope with a difficult husband. She appears to favour her irresponsible son, Bilal, who abandons the family to look after his own needs but in the end she really does understand that her son is very much like his father. " 'Because Bilal is like his father. Why do you think I work as a masi? Because it was all I could do to protect Bilal from his father. They are the same. No matter how much they mean well, they cannot fight the shaitan - the devil - that lives within. They know what is right, what is wrong, but they always do what they know best. Cheat. Lie. Steal.' " Amma is also a woman of extraordinary strength and resolve. She accepts the fact that she must look after her family by herself and she sets out to do this. Even as she suffers one hardship after the next, Amma is representative of the resilience of Pakistani women in a culture that places certain expectations and limitations on them.

The story in Beneath My Mother's Feet succeeds because readers are able to experience an emotional connection to certain characters: Nazia and Amma because of their personal struggles and their physical suffering, and even Abbu, who is a generally dislikeable character. He always seems to have an ulterior motive, making him an annoying character. It soon becomes apparent that much of the suffering Nazia and her family experience are due to this man's irresponsibility. Although most of the male characters in the book are not positive role models, Qamar seems to imply that this is a family trait and not a statement on the men of Pakistan. For example, her friend Maleeha's brother, Hisham, is respectful and treats both Nazia and Maleeha with kindness.

There are many interesting themes that run throughout Beneath My Mother's Feet. The dominant theme concerns the relationship between mothers and daughters in Pakistani culture. The title of this novel is part of a quote attributed to the prophet Muhammad, "The gates of heaven lie beneath a mother's feet." This is a well-known Islamic saying that the way to Paradise is to serve, respect and honor one's mother. However, Nazia struggles with this. Amma expects that Nazia will do what she asks of her to please her - as a dutiful daughter. Yet as the novel progresses, Amma comes to the realization that Nazia is different and Nazia realizes that she will not be happy with the choices that her mother has made for her. While Amma expects that Nazia will marry because this offers her the best path in life, Nazia feels differently. It is not an easy decision to go against her mother, but unlike Bilal, she does it gently and with respect towards her mother. "...She asked Allah to forgive her for what she was about to do, and she hoped that Amma wouldn't think she was abandoning her in the same way Bilal had. When the time came, Nazia wanted the gates of heaven to be open for her."

Beneath My Mother's Feet is a well-written engaging novel that would be a great choice for a mother/daughter book club. There are many themes and ideas to explore in such a reading. Beneath My Mother's Feet is an absorbing coming of age novel for younger teens.

Book Details:
Beneath My Mother's Feet by Amjed Qamar
New York: Atheneum Books 2008
198 pp.