Jane, the Fox and Me

Product Description A graphic novel about bullying, body image and the transformative power of fiction. Hélène has been inexplicably ostracized by the girls who were once her friends. Her school life is full of whispers and lies — Hélène weighs 216; she smells like BO. Her loving mother is too tired to be any help. Fortunately, Hélène has one consolation, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Hélène identifies strongly with Jane’s tribulations, and when she is lost in the pages of this wonderful book, she is able to ignore her tormentors. But when Hélène is humiliated on a class trip in front of her entire grade, she needs more than a fictional character to see herself as a person deserving of laughter and friendship. Leaving the outcasts’ tent one night, Hélène encounters a fox, a beautiful creature with whom she shares a moment of connection. But when Suzanne Lipsky frightens the fox away, insisting that it must be rabid, Hélène’s despair becomes even more pronounced: now she believes that only a diseased and dangerous creature would ever voluntarily approach her. But then a new girl joins the outcasts’ circle, Géraldine, who does not even appear to notice that she is in danger of becoming an outcast herself. And before long Hélène realizes that the less time she spends worrying about what the other girls say is wrong with her, the more able she is to believe that there is nothing wrong at all. This emotionally honest and visually stunning graphic novel reveals the casual brutality of which children are capable, but also assures readers that redemption can be found through connecting with another, whether the other is a friend, a fictional character or even, amazingly, a fox. From Booklist Pubescent Hélène sees herself as fat and beleaguered by her more popular and social classmates, so she turns to Jane Eyre to find a model for setting her prospects both high and anywhere other than her immediate circumstances. Britt’s well-constructed narrative is achieved sensitively through Arsenault’s impressionistic artwork, in which we see that Hélène is a pretty-ordinary-looking little 11-year-old in spite of her self-image. While her everyday life—which has become further burdened by an all-class camping trip—appears in a gray palette, when Hélène daydreams about Jane’s life, pastel washes and a vivid red appear. During the camping trip, Hélène comes across a red fox in the woods and begins to make some human friends. After a post–camping trip weigh-in, where she sees she’s perfectly normal, Hélène’s everyday world also takes on color. An elegant and accessible approach to an important topic, for readers of Erin Dionne’s Models Don’t Eat Chocolate Cookies (2009) and other novels about girls learning to cope with their own expectations of themselves. Grades 5-9. --Francisca Goldsmith Review A New York Times Best Illustrated Book "Loneliness is a language that doesn’t need translation....It’s a language understood by anyone who has endured the interminable wait for a Géraldine of her own." — The New York Times "Readers will be delighted to see Helene’s world change as she grows up, learning to ignore the mean girls and realizing that, like Jane, she is worthy of friendship and love." — School Library Journal, Starred Review "Hélène’s emotional tangle is given poignant expression through Arsenault’s pitch-perfect mixed-media art . . . [Her] story is sweetly comforting and compelling." — Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, Starred Review   "There was no possibility of hiding anywhere today. Not in the halls at school or out in the schoolyard or even in the far stairway, the one leading to art class that smells like sour milk. They're everywhere, just like their insults scribbled on the walls." — from the book Winner of the Governor General's Literary Award for Children's Illustration (French) Finalist for the Eisner Award for Best Publication for Children Finalist for the Amelia Frances Howar