about the book
His boy is crying. Could he be hurt? The red bushy-tailed fox becomes frenzied, searching for a wound. He finds none. The boy never cries. The fox gently licks away the salty tears. As he does, the car they are riding in slows. Fox knows the word “no” and the boy says it over and over again. What is wrong?
When the car stops, the father grabs the fox by the ruff and the animal dangles in the air unmoving. He could nip but he doesn’t want to upset the boy. The father and the boy walk toward the edge of the woods. The father indicates the dark trees and the boy pulls the toy soldier from his pocket. He reluctantly throws it. After the toss, the fox streaks off. It is a game they frequently have played. Only this time, when the fox returns with the toy, the boy and his father are gone.
Peter rescued Pax as an orphaned kit. That was five years earlier, around the time Peter’s mother died suddenly. Pax is a tame pet. He no longer roams the forest or hunts for his own food. Now he is alone, unsure what he is supposed to do.
War is raging and Peter’s father has enlisted. The heartbroken boy is dropped at his grandpa’s house three hundred miles away. His father claims there is no place there for Peter’s rascally fox. That night, filled with remorse and worry, Peter knows he has to find Pax, no matter what.
So as twelve-year-old Peter sets off on his own toward where the brutal and deadly war is encroaching fast, Pax makes his own way, hoping for a faint scent of the boy he loves so much. He faces his own perilous journey in the wilds, a place equally as brutal as the human war.
Warning, dear reader, this is a grim and heart-pounding tale. Spurred by love and loyalty, will the two ever be reunited?
about the author
Sara Pennypacker was born in a tiny Massachusetts town. Shy and way too tall, she loved books, art, and most of all—baseball. Her childhood dream was to play shortstop for the Boston Red Sox.
As an adult, she began painting with watercolors and opened her own gallery. After she had children, she spent a lot of time in libraries looking for books to read to them, and she realized that she wanted to write children’s books most of all. She considers kids the best audience, because they fall in love with the stories and the characters of the books they read. She’s written seventeen children’s books so far!
Sara has two grown children. She says that they were “nutballs” when they were young, and she modeled Clementine after them. For her book Pax, Sara consulted with a fox expert, Matt Walker. She learned that foxes are brilliant and can interpret the language of dozens of different species.
Sara has a sign over her desk that says “The story is the boss.” The quote is from writer Stephen King, reminding her to let the story tell her how it needs to be told. In Pax, part of the story had to be told by the fox. Writing is hard work, and after she finished Pax, Sara decided she wouldn’t write for a few years. Then this bossy new idea came to her and demanded to be told, too. We’ll have to watch for it in her next new book! So much for taking time off!
Sara lives on Cape Cod in Massachusetts and in Florida. When she isn’t writing, she likes to read, swim, and take walks.
Sources:
Author website
Author interview: NPR
Book Trailer: Pax
Also by Sara Pennypacker:
Summer of the Gypsy Moths. Balzer + Bray. 2012.
read more!
Little Foxes by Michael Morpurgo
Bullied and nagged, orphan Billy escapes the stresses of life in a foster home and at school by going down to the wilderness by the canal. In an abandoned monastery, he befriends and protects a family of fox cubs. Then his secret hiding place is discovered and the wild creatures are deemed a threat! The fox family is wiped out except for one lone fox. Unwanted and unloved, Billy and the fox run away. Will they find a better life together?
Maybe a Fox by Kathi Appelt & Alison McGhee
One day Jules’s older sister Sylvie ran down to the river to throw a wishing rock into the water and didn’t return. She had slipped and fallen into the river and now is gone forever—like their mother who died suddenly a few years before. At the same time, Senna the fox is born., Part spirit and part animal, Senna finds herself drawn to Jules, and soon the young girl and the fox find their fates linked to one another.
Summer of the Gypsy Moths by Sara Pennypacker
While Stella’s mom is off finding herself, Stella stays with her great-aunt Louise and her foster daughter, Angel, at a Cape Cod cottage. But when Aunt Louise suddenly dies, Stella and Angel are afraid they’ll be sent back into the foster care system…so they secretly assume responsibility for the vacation cottages.