Leila and the Blue Fox: Winner of the Wainwright Children’s Prize 2023
About this audiobook
She was very tired.
She lay down, her soft head on her soft paws.
The sunset licked her face.
The snow covered her like a blanket.
Fox wakes, and begins to walk. She crosses ice and snow, over mountains and across frozen oceans, encountering bears and birds beneath the endless daylight of an Arctic summer, navigating a world that is vast, wild and wondrous.
Meanwhile, Leila embarks on a journey of her own - finding her way to the mother who left her. On a breathtaking journey across the sea, Leila rediscovers herself and the mother she thought she'd lost, with help from a determined little fox.
Based on the true story of an Arctic fox who walked from Norway to Canada in seventy-six days, a distance of two thousand miles, this compelling, emotional and beautifully illustrated story is the perfect gift for 9+ readers.
Praise for Julia and the Shark:
'A tale of courage, understanding and compassion' The Observer
'Julia and the Shark is deep, beautiful and true. A classic from cover to cover' Eoin Colfer
'A book to treasure!' Jacqueline Wilson
(P) 2022 Hodder & Stoughton Limited
About the author
Kiran Millwood Hargrave is an award-winning, bestselling novelist. Her debut story for children The Girl of Ink & Stars won the Waterstones Children's Book Prize, and the British Book Awards Children's Book of the Year. Her work has been short- and long-listed for numerous major prizes including the Costa Award and the CILIP Carnegie Award, and her novel Julia and the Shark, illustrated by Tom de Freston, was named Waterstones Children's Gift of the Year, and Leila and the Blue Fox won the Wainwright Prize. She's a graduate of both Oxford and Cambridge Universities, and lives in Oxford with her husband, daughter and cats, in a house between a river and a forest.
Kiran Millwood Hargrave and Tom de Freston met in 2009, when Kiran was a student and Tom was artist-in-residence at Cambridge University. They have been a couple and collaborators ever since, but Julia and the Shark is their first novel. Kiran is the award-winning, bestselling author of stories including The Girl of Ink & Stars, The Way Past Winter, and The Deathless Girls, and Tom is making his illustrative debut having worked as an acclaimed artist for many years. They live in Oxford with their rescue cat Luna, in a house between a river and a forest.
