Monday, May 31, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: A Game of Fox & Squirrels by Jenn Reese

 




A Game of Fox & Squirrels is a middle grade novel written in 2020 by Jenn Reese.  It's a novel that I hadn't heard of in 2020 - despite my ever increasing reading of YA, my reading of Middle-Grade generally is limited to authors I know of already - but which came to my attention by being nominated for the Norton Award, the Nebula Award for YA/Middle-Grade fiction.  It was in fact the only book nominated for the Norton that I hadn't read, so I reserved a copy from my local library to try and remedy that fact.  

And A Game of Fox & Squirrels reminds me of last year's Norton Award winner (Fran Wilde's Riverland) in that it's a middle grade novel that's a tale of abuse and written for kids suffering from same.  Of course unlike that novel, which took place while the kid protagonists were still dealing with the emotional abuse, this novel takes place in the aftermath - featuring an 11 year old girl named Sam who, along with her older sister, has been taken from her abusive father in LA and placed with an Aunt she doesn't know in Oregon.  The result is a powerful story that I again wish probably wasn't so applicable to many kids in this world, as Sam struggles to deal with a situation that isn't abusive and gets involved in a magical world that absolutely is......

------------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------------
11 year old Samantha ("Sam") doesn't want to be traveling with her sister to Oregon.  She wants to be home in LA, where her friends are, where the world she knows with her parents is, where school is bound to start again in two weeks.  But Sam and her older sister Caitlin said things to some other adults, and now they find themselves forced to move in with their Aunt Vicky, whom they've never met, all the way out in Rural Oregon...far away from anything she knows.  Sam just desperately wants to go home to the life she knows above all else, where not only her friends were, but where she also knew all the rules that she must absolutely NEVER break.  

But when her aunt gives Sam a card game called "A Game of Fox & Squirrels," the game starts to come to life: with the fox Ashander coming to Sam and promising to help her find the Golden Acorn, an object with the power to grant any wish Sam wants, in exchange for passing 3 tests.  But each of the tests asks Sam to further and further break her Aunt's trust and Sam finds herself as time goes on beginning to actually like her Aunt Vicky and the people around her - her Aunt's wife Hannah, her Aunt's business partner Armen and his son Lucas - and finds it harder and harder to act on the tests.  

And when Ashander changes the rules on her suddenly, Sam will need to make a choice as to what she really wants....and what it really means to go home.  
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A Game of Fox & Squirrels is a tale of abuse, although it takes place after the non-magical abuse has already happened.  Sam's sister Caitlin is old enough to understand what happened and why it was wrong although she's still heavily affected by it and naturally unsure about her new situation and if it will be any better, taking a while to put down her own shell and try to be herself.  But this is not Caitlin's story, it's Sam's, and Sam doesn't understand these things.  To Sam, just because she answered some questions from some strangers, she was taken away from the home she knew, from the friends she had in school, without any good explanation or answer for when if ever she can go back. 

And for Sam, unlike her sister, she has no understanding that what her parents (notably her father) were doing to her and Caitlin was wrong.  Or that it's unusual, and such that she keeps waiting for her Aunt Vicky and Hannah to get angry with them when she does something wrong, or to hurt them, or whatever.  And so when Vicky reacts uncomfortably at first to Sam's presence, she's sure it's just hiding what's to come.  And Sam is a lover of fantasy worlds, even if the fantasy she wants the most is to go home.  And so when a fantastical fox promises Sam can go home if she follows his riddles and does what he says, it's an easy answer for her to say "yes."  

But as the fox Ashander turns clearly abusing, demanding more and more unreasonable things - things that will hurt her Aunt and others - Sam begins to doubt.  Especially when everyone else seems actually to be nice - from the boy her age who is overeager to be friendly, to his father her aunt's business partner who doesn't mind if the boy or her interrupts them, to her aunt, who it turns out was uncomfortable because her parents (Sam's grandparents) were also abusive and is desperately afraid that she will be as bad as Sam's father.  And the book highlights the abusive nature of the fox with interludes from the card game he came from, showing how the fox monopolizes the rules and takes everything.  

It all winds up - the story, the card game, Sam's character arc - being a very well done journey through a girl finally realizing there is something other than abuse and that there is a path to a better happier life - and that even the cold strangers who seem to be wrong in taking her away from her parents might actually be trying to help her.  And so yeah, while this book is a hard book for me as an adult to read (abuse plots are painful), I can see how to a middle grade audience, especially kids in foster homes or living with family members after being taken from their parents by child services (like Sam, or like the author hints she is herself), this would be a strong book to help them recognize there is more out there and that it might all be for the best.  I kind of think it might be a bit too on the nose for that honestly, but I'm not an expert in middle grade literature or what kids like this need, which makes reviewing this kind of hard!  But for what it is, it's done very well, in a short tight package.



 

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