Bookreview: "Pax" by Sara Pennypacker

I have read “Pax” by Sara Pennypacker (awesome surname!) and here is my review of it.

“I had a fox. I have a fox… We left him on the side of the road. My dad said we had to, but I should never have done it.” Pax and Peter have been inseparable ever since Peter rescued him as a cub. But when Peter is forced to return his fox to the wild his world is torn apart.

Despite the encroaching war, and the three hundred miles between them, Peter sets out to find his fox. Meanwhile Pax waits hopefully for his boy…

A powerful story about the unbreakable bond between a boy and his fox.

(The above text is borrowed from the blurb on the back of the book.)

Verdict:

I LOVED this book! Only a very few books are this good but it just got to me right away and here’s why;

I immediately fell for the cover (illustrated by Jon Klassen) at the bookstore, so classy, pretty, artsy and full of mood that I had to read the blurb on the back to see what it was about. Then I knew that this was one of those stories I just had to read, so I brought it home and read it.

I instantly got the Fox & Hound (Disney) feeling off this book and it was so poetic and made me laugh, cry, hope, hate and laugh and cry again – I was all over the place and loving it because it was so subtle and so elegant in it’s language and in the way Pax, the fox, is portrayed as a real animal and it’s experiences in the forest while Peter is gone, just feel so plausible.

I am thrilled of the way the author chose to keep Pax and Peter separated and make them both learn a few lessons, before resolving the story in a very heart wrenching but right way at the end. There is so much more going on in this story, than just a boy and his fox.

Sara Pennypacker weaves war stories, tragic incidents and quiet peoples’ existences into the story of Pax in such a subtle way that it almost hurts and even the fox and his friends get the same attention to detail and personality as the humans, without making them seem like they are ‘special’ animals. They are just as caught up in the middle of the war as anyone else and it is simply a beautifully told story, with so much to share.

I wish I could tell you way more about “Pax” by Sara Pennypacker but I wouldn’t want to spoil it for you! If you cried to “Fox & Hound” and still watch it sometimes or if you like the subtleties of “The reader on the 6.27” you need to read this book!

This book is a clear gem and it now has a spot on my bookshelf for special books – definite re-read!