Output details

Tilly's Moonlight Fox

Tilly’s Moonlight Fox is a novel about Tilly, a young girl who is suffering anxiety in a world full of change – a move of house, new school, and an ill (pregnant) mother. Its research questions include: 1, How may traditional ideas, themes and form be reworked for a contemporary audience of children? 2 How may techniques of magical realism be used as a way of expressing and resolving the protagonist’s anxieties about loss and change? 3 How may a child’s worries be played out in fiction through dreams and in daily life, and how can they be resolved, in a form and language that is accessible for children aged eight to eleven years? Research included examining classic children’s fiction (The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett, 1911, and Tom’s Midnight Garden, Philippa Pearce, 1958), and exploring similar issues in a contemporary setting. This, too, mixes realism with a more fantastic or magical element, crossing the boundary between the real contemporary world of a house and garden and the imaginative, inner world of a child, and elements of the past (the ghostly presence of a girl from the past history of the house). Other research was conducted through working with children and reading and training in counselling skills and teaching. In addition to bookshop and online sales, this novel has been sold into book clubs in large numbers (24,000 copies, for two book clubs which sell directly into schools). It is available as an ebook and audiobook. Translation rights have been sold for China. The book is published in the United States under the title Tilly’s Moonlight Garden (Jabberwocky, Source Books ISBN: 13:978-1-4022-7730-6).