The lightning flashes, the world is turned white for a moment, and I see everything as it was – the broken lock, the empty cage, the small tracks disappearing into the rain. Or sometimes it is that last terrible night, and I am standing beneath the oak tree with the rain beating against me. She is as light and free as the wind, exactly as she was the first time I saw her. It has been five years, but when I close my eyes I am once again by the creek watching the black fox come leaping over the green. Sometimes at night when the rain is beating against the windows of my room, I think about that summer on the farm. It’s not told with the gung-ho naivety of some children’s books, but treats Tom’s anxieties and concerns seriously – not least because we read it in the first person. What makes it such a special little book? The style, I think. He starts to look out for her, and becomes increasingly keen to observe her playing with her small fox cub he is almost bewitched by this elegant, elemental life lived near to him – and must find a way to stop his hunting uncle from trapping the fox. The story is simple – Tom is beguiled by the beauty of this unusual fox, who is entirely black. I doubt that Byars plagiarised the book, but the similarities amused me. In both, a certain midnight aberration becomes an obsession, and changes the stay into a much happier event Peter is written to from a distance, and becomes an accomplice in the discovery. In both, a boy named Tom must reluctantly go and stay with his aunt and uncle, and greatly misses a boy called Peter. The premise has a surprising number of similarities with Philippa Pearce’s much-loved children’s book Tom’s Midnight Garden, published ten years earlier. But now I have read, and very much enjoyed, this sweet and touching tale of a holiday on a farm. Yet again, having only read Enid Blyton for years on end means that I don’t know that much about other children’s classics. I hadn’t heard of it, but I think The Midnight Fox is well known in some circles.

And shortly afterwards Betsy Byars’ The Midnight Fox (1968) arrived. Well, I was very touched, and – not one to turn down a book recommendation or, indeed, a book – said yespleasethankyouverymuch.

A little while ago I got a very nice email from someone called Vicki, saying how much she enjoyed reading Stuck-in-a-Book, and asking if she could send me one of the books she loved as a sort of thank you.

The midnight fox