A sweet story about a girl named Mo who love love loves her neighborhood on Fox Street. Mo and her little sister Dottie lost their mother when they were young, but they have a great community helping their father raise them. Trouble comes when a developer targets Fox Street for destruction and Mo's best friend Mercedes changes in ways Mo doesn't understand (basically, Mercedes' family suddenly has a lot of money). Mo has two important goals: staying on Fox Street and trying to spy an actual fox in the wooded area near her house.

The trouble with this story is that it's slow. It's well-written, the characters are lovable, and the drama is real, but the plot is pretty stagnant. There's a "mystery" regarding a mean old neighbor-lady's sudden interest in Mercerdes, but it's totally transparent, so really not a mystery at all. Mo's attachment to her neighborhood is so fierce it's compelling, but emotion alone doesn't make that great of a story.

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A good read, but I'm not certain of the age of the target audience.

A pattern I think I'm starting to see with [a:Springstubb|58029|Tricia Springstubb|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1281601116p2/58029.jpg] is that everyone (and I mean everyone) in her book(s) has a problem or difficulty of some sort. Divorced, abandoned, alcohol, physical abuse, violence, widowed, murderer, stroke, old-age, fat, tall, skinny—they don't seem to be character descriptions, but almost character definitions. Not quite, but close.

The story itself I would recommend to my 10 year-old. But the complicated parentage and off-page sex situations make me wonder if perhaps it is more mature than what I would rather be on her reading list. ( )

One of the most perfect children's chapter books I've read in a long time. I knew immediately from the very beginning of the story, that I was going to love this. The author paints such an accurate touching perspective of childhood, honing in on the anxiety that comes with growing up and watching the world open up around you as you start to understand things more. Sweet simplicity starts to slip away...

Beautifully written, sweet, spunky, funny. I loved it. ( )

The author does a particularly fine job of capturing a child's perspective of the street you live on being the whole world. ( )

Fox Street means everything to Mo Wren, who is nearly eleven, and so she is very upset when a land developer offers to buy her father's house, especially since she has not yet found the fox she is sure lives in the nearby ravine.