Solitary fox finds estranged old friend
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/01/2026 (264 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Friends might fight, but that doesn’t mean they should remain estranged.
Fox lives a perfect but solitary life in the forest in Fox and the Mystery Letter (Frances Lincoln Children’s Books, 40 pages, hardcover, $24), written and illustrated by Toronto’s Alex G. Griffiths. One day, he receives a puzzling letter that leads him on a treasure hunt, where his long-ago friend is waiting to pick up the pieces of their fractured relationship.
A sweetly-told story, Griffith’s drawings have a sense of humour that will draw in children from ages 4-6, teaching them lessons they may apply in their own lives one day.
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Jean-François Senechal uses defenseless, innocent bunnies to animate I Will Not Be Scared (Milky Way Picture Books, 40 pages, hardcover, $24), a powerful story that’s relevant to many children today. A little bunny’s mother teases out why he can’t sleep — flashbacks to the war they escaped as well as something that happened at his new school. She gently validates his fears, and Bunny figures out how to go to sleep and how to go forward.
Buoyed by Italian artist Simone Rea’s spare, richly coloured illustrations, this book can help children, and their parents, get past events that shouldn’t have happened.
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Part of the Skunk and Badger series by Amy Timberlake, Rock Paper Incisors (HarperCollins, 192 pages, hardcover, $20) is a tongue-in-cheek tale about the difficulty of raising kids.
It’s winter, and Badger should be hibernating. He can’t go to sleep until he finishes an article for The Rock Hound Weekly, but two active pre-teen rats he and Skunk are raising keep tearing the house apart.
Children ages 7-9 will laugh at the chaos in the household. It’s all very exhausting and the weather is chilly, so what’s a badger to do? Former Winnipegger Jon Klassen’s quaint illustrations animate the hijinx and the mess.
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Broadcaster, writer and illustrator Kevin Sylvester is back with Time Surfers (HarperCollins, 256 pages, softcover, $25), a fast-paced, imaginative adventure tale for kids ages 8-12.
Caleb is a young teen who lives in the future, after society on Earth has been destroyed. He and his dad are part of a community of space salvagers who travel back through time to retrieve inanimate historical treasures before the items are destroyed in fires, wars, floods and volcanoes. When he violates the laws of the shadowy ruling Council, he unleashes events that reveal something unexpected about his life and puts others in danger.
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When Winnipegger Colleen Nelson writes a book, you know it will be characterized by strong writing, rich vocabulary and contemporary issues that kids ages 8-11 might face.
How to Save a Library (Pajama Press, 224 pages, hardcover, $23) features Casey, whose father insists on moving apartments and jobs often, preventing Casey from developing friendships. When Casey helps with the community effort to save the Cornish Library, the value of friends makes the probability of moving away even harder. There’s lots about the importance of libraries, lots about soccer, and lots of good humour.
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High school students are concerned about the future — both theirs and the world’s. Birch and Jay: The Knowledge Seekers, Book 1 (Latitude 46, 230 pages, softcover, $23), the debut by North Bay, Ont. writer Allister Thompson, plunges readers into the time after the apocalypse created by human-made climate change. Living in scattered settlements around the North Bay and Toronto regions, people fear each other. Two teens set out to help their community and discover how society destroyed itself. Can they stop it from making these mistakes again?
Harriet Zaidman is an award-winning children’s writer and reviewer. Her most recent novel, What Friends Are For, was released in October 2025.
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