I Am Reading: Moose and Mouse

Snail's Legs

Anzu the Great Listener

The Swap

Winterling

The Time of Green Magic

The One and Only Bob

A Horse Named Sky

Hélène has been inexplicably ostracized by the girls who were once her friends. Her school life is full of whispers and lies — Hélène weighs 216; she smells like BO. Her loving mother is too tired to be any help. Fortunately, Hélène has one consolation, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. Hélène identifies strongly with Jane’s tribulations, and when she is lost in the pages of this wonderful book, she is able to ignore her tormentors. But when Hélène is humiliated on a class trip in front of her entire grade, she needs more than a fictional character to allow her to see herself as a person deserving of laughter and friendship.

Leaving the outcasts’ tent one night, Hélène encounters a fox, a beautiful creature with whom she shares a moment of connection. But when Suzanne Lipsky frightens the fox away, insisting that it must be rabid, Hélène’s despair becomes even more pronounced: now she believes that only a diseased and dangerous creature would ever voluntarily approach her. But then a new girl joins the outcasts’ circle, Géraldine, who does not even appear to notice that she is in danger of becoming an outcast herself. And before long Hélène realizes that the less time she spends worrying about what the other girls say is wrong with her, the more able she is to believe that there is nothing wrong at all.

This emotionally honest and visually stunning graphic novel reveals the casual brutality of which children are capable, but also assures readers that redemption can be found through connecting with another, whether the other is a friend, a fictional character or even, amazingly, a fox.

Discover Your Child's Next Read

I Am Reading: Moose and Mouse

Colin West, 2004

Snail's Legs

Damian Harvey, Korky Paul, 2006

Anzu the Great Listener

Benson Shum, 2023

The Swap

Megan Shull, 2014

Winterling

Sarah Prineas, 2012

The Time of Green Magic

Hilary Mckay, 2019

The One and Only Bob

Patricia Castelao, Applegate Katherine, 2020

A Horse Named Sky

Kirbi Fagan, Rosanne Parry, 2023