SOLC #28/31 -
I'm slicing with the Two Writing Teachers community for Day Twenty-Eight of Thirty-One of the Slice of Life Challenge in March. Thank you Stacey, Tara, Anna, Betsy, Dana, Kathleen, Beth, and Deb. On Mondays, I connect with a group that reviews books they want to share. Here's a fabulous way to discover books you may not know.
Visit Jen at Teach MentorTexts and Kellee and Ricki at UnleashingReaders to see what they've been reading, along with everyone else who link up.
Peter must say goodbye according to
his father. He must return his fox Pax to the woods, the one he trusts more
than any other living thing, the one he’s cared for since Pax was found, the
lone pup alive in a den. Some shadowy
rumblings of war in the world outside begin this story of self-discovery, the learning
of what is right to do. Peter’s father
takes him to leave Pax, then to his grandfather’s, while the father leaves for
war. Peter shows hints of past troubles, hints throughout the book of the guilt
he carries from one incident before his mother drives off, evidently killed in
a car crash. And Peter knows what he must do; he leaves on a trek of hundreds
of miles through forest that same night as his grandfather sleeps.
And that is where the story begins,
when in alternate chapters we realize that not only are we going to observe
Peter’s learning on the way, we’re going to observe Pax’s as well. It’s a long
journey to research, imagine and write how a fox might behave and think as he
encounters the wild for the first time. Sara Pennypacker shows that she did
that study well. Here is a bit of the first night alone for Pax: “The long
night before, they (noises) had alarmed Pax. The blackness had quivered with
the rustle of night prowlers, and even the sounds of the trees
themselves--leaves unfurling, sap coursing up new wood, the tiny cracklings of
expanding bark--had startled him over and over as he waited for Peter to
return.” Pax’s words grab my sympathy as I fear for him as much as for Peter,
whose brave and long trek holds dangers too. Soon into the story, Peter is
injured. He collapses with the pain, falls asleep. It’s so soon into the tale
that I wondered what he would do. That’s when another character appears, a
woman living far inside the woods.
This was beginning to feel like a
fairy tale (remember Hansel & Gretel?), but no, it was not. Peter’s further
experiences opened new paths to make his way both physically and emotionally.
That time became my favorite, filled with different perspectives about feelings
and how they both help and hurt our lives. At the same time, Pax was moving
into his true domain, a wood with other foxes. One scene touched me very much.
One fox with which Pax feels great kinship was wounded. Pax lies with him in
the final moments: “He purred with Gray under his silver mother’s rough tongue,
tasted her warm milk, felt the weight of her chin resting over his newborn
skull. And then peace.”
The basic plot feels out of the
ordinary, but the meaning feels like life, the day to day love we give each
other, the fierce love we feel for those close. It is both a human and a
creature tale, to learn from and to enjoy all the way through.