Contemporary Middle School Book

Ten-year-old Mo has lived her whole life on Fox Street in Cleveland, Ohio. It’s a short street filled with friendly neighbors and it dead ends into a ravine, a glorious Green Kingdom where Mo, her friend Mercedes, and her red-haired little sister Dottie can roam and explore. Sometimes Mo goes there and sits quietly, hoping to glimpse the fox she’s certain lives nearby. She even finds a tuft of reddish fur in a bush one day—surely left by the fox!

But changes are looming. Mo’s friend Mercedes stays each summer with her grandma, but her grandma’s health problems will soon force her to move from Fox Street and Mercedes will be gone, too. And worse yet, Mo’s father thinks they should sell their house and live above a tavern in another neighborhood so he can open a sports bar.

Mo has already gone through enough changes—her mother died a few years earlier and life has never been the same. Her father is sad and Mo has to take care of five-year-old Dottie. Even with help from the neighbors, Mo feels weighed down.

To make matters worse, Dottie takes and then loses Mo’s precious wisps of fox fur, the one proof that her fox really existed. The sisters argue and later little Dottie disappears. All of Fox Street rallies to search for her. Mo herself hurries down into the ravine, sure that’s where her sister went. She’s afraid that Dottie, thoughtless but brave, could have tried something too daring and hurt herself. At first she’s frantic, but then she hears a calming voice inside—could it be the fox?

I would love to live in the close-knit community of Fox Street, especially with the Green Kingdom at the end of the street. Mo is lovable and believable, with a good heart, and she and several of the other characters change and grow as they live through the events of that summer on Fox Street. This wise and beautifully-written story ponders the changes life brings.

The book jacket says that author Tricia Springstubb “has a red-haired sister, lives on a really cool street, and loves quiet green places. She has seen a fox once in her life and will never forget it.”

Reading level: 10 and up. Mercedes’ mother has never had a husband until recently and Mercedes didn’t know who her father was. By the end of the book, she finds out—this is handled very discreetly.

Published in 2010

218 pages

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