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What Happened on Fox Street
by
Tricia Springstubb (Goodreads Author)
Fox Street was a dead end. In Mo Wren's opinion, this was only one of many wonderful, distinguishing things about it.
Mo lives on Fox Street with her dad and little sister, the Wild Child. Their house is in the middle of the block—right where a heart would be, if the street were a person. Fox Street has everything: a piano player, a fix-it man, the city's best burrito maker...more
Mo lives on Fox Street with her dad and little sister, the Wild Child. Their house is in the middle of the block—right where a heart would be, if the street were a person. Fox Street has everything: a piano player, a fix-it man, the city's best burrito maker...more
Kindle Edition
Published
(first published January 1st 2010)
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Mo Wren was born on the kitchen table in her home on Fox Street. Ten years later Fox Street is still her world. She can't imagine living anywhere else.
With five houses on either side, Fox Street is bordered on one end by Paradise Avenue and on the other by a wooded ravine called the Green Kingdom. The Green Kingdom is one of the best things about Fox Street. Then there are the neighbors. There's a piano player, a teacher, the best burrito makers in the city, a woman who works in a funeral home,...more
With five houses on either side, Fox Street is bordered on one end by Paradise Avenue and on the other by a wooded ravine called the Green Kingdom. The Green Kingdom is one of the best things about Fox Street. Then there are the neighbors. There's a piano player, a teacher, the best burrito makers in the city, a woman who works in a funeral home,...more
Feb 12, 2012
Vikki VanSickle
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
middle-grade
Even without the adorable graphic of a cuddly looking fox curled up in the O of Fox, I would have snatched this book up based on the title alone. I love vague, suggestive titles that refer to some life changing event, such as What I Saw and How I Lied, or How I Live Now. I think it harkens back to the most intriguing title of my childhood, What Katy Did.* What Katy actually did proved to be a bit of a let down. Not so with the mysterious events alluded to in the title of What Happened on Fox Str...more
Just finished this a day ago and this is not hyperbole: What Happened on Fox Street by Tricia Springstubb. If you work with children from third grade through middle school, you should read this book and attempt to press it into their hot little hands. It made me laugh, made me think, made me cry. The author conjured beautiful, descriptive sentences that I wish I had written. You won't regret reading What Happened on Fox Street. It will grab you from the first paragraph and hold you until the las...more
Mo has always live on Fox Street and thinks it's a perfect place to dwell, a cozy little dead-end road with a perfect mix of neighbors and a wooded ravine at its end. She has her hard-working dad, her little sister, and a best friend to spend every summer with while Mercedes stays at her grandma. So when major changes start rearing their heads her tenth summer, it seems like perfection is falling apart. Mo won't accept the changes passively, though, and immediately starts working to remind every...more
Mo Wren loves living on Fox Street. There’s something good and interesting about every neighbor, except one…but then, even Mrs. Steinbott, turns out to have a kind heart and a mystery! Author Springstubb introduces characters from Mo’s melting pot cul-de-sac. Da, Mo’s neighborhood grandma, is a big-hearted woman who is beginning to have trouble living alone. Her best friend Mercedes is frustrated with her own family’s changes, a new stepdad.
Since Mo’s mom died, she has been responsible for her l...more
Lovely realistic middle fiction! Mo Wren lives on fox Street a cul de sac that is just about perfect, there is music, food and friends in abundance even if the potholes grow and the houses need paint and perhaps a bit of repair. The house Mo shares with Dottie, Dad and the memory of Mom are all she has ever known or wants to know.
This is a summer of change though- Pi the boy up the street is suddenly interesting, Mercedes who spends every summer with Da who is now unwell, is very aware this wil...more
This is a summer of change though- Pi the boy up the street is suddenly interesting, Mercedes who spends every summer with Da who is now unwell, is very aware this wil...more
Mo lives on Fox Street, a cul-de-sac in slow decline, but also her pride and joy and her favorite place in the world. At one end is a busy urban thoroughfare with a pub on the corner. At the other is the Green Kingdom, a ravine separating the residential neighborhood from a metropark, and a great source of solace and magic for 11-year-old Mo. And she needs solace and magic, for lots of changes are afoot. Her long-awaited best friend returns for the summer, but Mercedes has issues in her new home...more
Mar 07, 2011
Maricor
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
contemporary-realism-historical-f
What Happened on Fox Street by Tricia Springstubb (2010)
Contemporary Realism, 218 pages
Fox Street is a block full of families, best friends, and a dead-end that really is the beginning of a ravine and a Green Kingdom, overflowing with secrets and nature. For Mo Wren, Fox street is the best place on earth, even during the worst draught of her lifetime and without her mother whose memory still lives on in Mo’s surroundings. With her mother gone, Mo becomes responsible for many of her family’s need...more
Contemporary Realism, 218 pages
Fox Street is a block full of families, best friends, and a dead-end that really is the beginning of a ravine and a Green Kingdom, overflowing with secrets and nature. For Mo Wren, Fox street is the best place on earth, even during the worst draught of her lifetime and without her mother whose memory still lives on in Mo’s surroundings. With her mother gone, Mo becomes responsible for many of her family’s need...more
Jan 09, 2011
Teresa
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
parent-child,
cha-cha-potential
Loved this! 11-year-old Mo loves living on her dead end street. She knows all about all her neighbors. She loves exploring the wooded ravine past the end of the street. And even though she misses her mom, who was killed a few years before, she and her dad and her pesky little sister have worked things out, she thinks. They're a team. Every summer Mo's best friend, Mercedes comes to stay on Fox Street with her grandma, Da. But Da's health is failing, and Mercede's parents want her to come live wi...more
I can't remember another children's book I've read recently that deals with the subject of corporate land development, so I almost feel like this book should be lauded for its originality in that department alone. However, I felt like the writing didn't always live up to this topic.
There were a lot of little things that did it for me: Mo's younger sister substituting words (which was cute at first but just became annoying and grating after awhile), the little details about the neighbors which w...more
There were a lot of little things that did it for me: Mo's younger sister substituting words (which was cute at first but just became annoying and grating after awhile), the little details about the neighbors which w...more
Nov 03, 2010
Robert Kent
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
middle-grade-ninja-reviews
You know how agents and editors and writing guides like to say that the setting should be a character in your story? No? Well, gee, this is awkward:) But if you have heard that, and I’d guess you have and you wondered what it meant, read What Happened on Fox Street. Fox Street is a character in this novel, I would even say a main character. Not the main character, but a main character.
Mo Wren, an eleven-year-old girl, is the protagonist, but only just barely. I think it’s telling that the first...more
Mo Wren, an eleven-year-old girl, is the protagonist, but only just barely. I think it’s telling that the first...more
It started off a bit slowly, but I really enjoyed this story by the end. It rang true as being about a small neighborhood, the kind where people don't move very often, and keep homes within the same family for a couple of generations. When urban decay and other factors threaten the quiet little place, the story, as told from the viewpoint of one of the few girls on the block, is very touching. The subplots, including the one about the elderly, cranky neighbor, were very good.
My only difficulty w...more
My only difficulty w...more
a nice read with a character who would keep good company with Susan Patron's Lucky, Lauren Child's Clarice Bean, and Kate DiCamillo's India Opal (of Because of Winn Dixie)...
"Mo finds a great deal of her identity in Fox Street, a move would signify a significant change. But as we know and Mo finds slammed home, some changes are out of our hands; and some are. Mercedes is also working through her own signifiers, having changed from eking to wealth, single-parent to two, etc. The relationships in...more
"Mo finds a great deal of her identity in Fox Street, a move would signify a significant change. But as we know and Mo finds slammed home, some changes are out of our hands; and some are. Mercedes is also working through her own signifiers, having changed from eking to wealth, single-parent to two, etc. The relationships in...more
Dec 06, 2011
Jackie
rated it
2 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
children-fiction,
friendship,
animals-foxes,
death,
grief,
siblings,
secrets,
summer,
moving,
5013
Mo Wren has lived on Fox Street her whole life...Fox Street full of eccentric and odd neighbors, abundant wild life (but no fox?), and a lifetime of memories. All of that threatens to be taken away when her Dad entertains a notion to sell the house and live his dream of opening up a family-friendly sports grill.
Her best friend, Mercedes only visits in the summer when she spends the carefree, hot, lazy days of vacation with her grandmother Da. Mo looks forward to these times above anything. You...more
Her best friend, Mercedes only visits in the summer when she spends the carefree, hot, lazy days of vacation with her grandmother Da. Mo looks forward to these times above anything. You...more
Mo Wren, almost 11, is unsettled. Things are changing on Fox Street, the small, unique, dead end street where she lives, knows everyone, and where her memories are, especially the memories of her mother. Her father works long hours and wants to move, she is left in charge of her little sister, the Wild Child, and this may be the last summer her best friend is around. She has always wanted to see a fox, the one she thinks should live in the ravine at the end of the street. Finding a tuft of fur g...more
Author Tricia Springstubb channels the deep sense of community thriving in Cleveland's many pocket neighborhoods to create a timeless childhood story. Protagonist Maureen (Mo) Wren can't wait to spend the lazy, hot days of summer playing on the streets and trees of her beloved Fox Street with her best friend and neighbor's granddaughter Mercedes. But, when Mercedes arrives for her yearly visit she's a foot taller, even more gorgeous, and dressed in designer clothes thanks to her new wealthy step...more
I'll admit it, this book had me on page four, where the author used the regionalism, "can of pop" instead of "can of soda". I'd be interested to know what nine and ten year olds think, because I can appreciate that some points in the plot that seemed obvious to me, may not resonate in the same way with a child reader who, like Mo, is at the age when they are realizing that sometimes things have to change and that it can be terrifying. Finally, I'm on board with the reviews that credit the book f...more
A story that feels contemporary and old fashioned at the same time, that's bursting with middle-childhood impatience yet mellowed by an impressively mature thoughtfulness. Immediately we feel right at home on Fox Street, and get to know its inhabitants: Mo and her father and little sister, Merce who's come to visit for the summer, Da (Merce's grandmother), and a host of other neighbours whom we learn to view very differently by the end of the book.
What seems like an awful lot of complicated situ...more
What seems like an awful lot of complicated situ...more
I enjoyed this contemporary story about a young girl who lives in a somewhat shabby Cleveland neighborhood. Her mother has died, so eleven-year-old Mo Wren is now helping her father keep the family together. Her best friend, who moved away, is back in town for the summer, so life should be good. But Mo intercepts a letter from a realtor that implies that her house (and the neighborhood) are in danger of being seized by eminent domain. Worried that her father will be quick to sell, Mo hides the l...more
What Happened on Fox Street by Tricia Springstubb is a book I wanted to like more. I thought the setting of Cleveland would be interesting, but Cleveland hardly comes into the story at all. I liked the fact that the story focused, for the most part, on working class families, struggling to make ends meet. Best friends Mo, and Mercedes, who has moved away but spends her summers with her grandmother, both have lost a parent. Things are changing on Fox Street, where all of Mo's memories of her moth...more
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...more
Mo has grown up on Fox Street, and has a fierce loyalty to all of her neighbors, who have all become good friends too. Fox Street has it all: a store within walking distance, a ravine in which to play, a great plum tree in their backyard. Most important, this was the house that her mom lived in too, so Mo figured they'd be here forever. But things are starting to change. The grandmother figure across the street may have to move in with her daughter. The one vacant house is bought up by a develop...more
quick, late night thoughts: I loved the writing: the character of Mo, the friendship with Mercedes, the dilemmas Mo faced. I loved the figurative language, setting and themes. I found myself wanting to mark many places where the writing stood out as exceptionally well-crafted. But I found the ending a little confusing in places.
My biggest frustration is the cover. Mo's friendship with Mercedes seems so central to the book that I wanted her on the cover. And I was especially frustrated because Me...more
My biggest frustration is the cover. Mo's friendship with Mercedes seems so central to the book that I wanted her on the cover. And I was especially frustrated because Me...more
Jan 10, 2011
Bobby
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
kidsstuff,
contemporary
Mo's idyllic life on her beloved Fox Street seems to be coming to an end. Her best friend seems to have changed over the past year, and the two seem to be growing apart. And her dad may sell her house, forcing her family to move.
This one never really grabbed me. There's a lot going on in this one, and there's a lot to like about it. I liked the the lower-middle class perspective that doesn't seem to be featured too often in children's lit. But I never connected with it for some reason. I don't k...more
This one never really grabbed me. There's a lot going on in this one, and there's a lot to like about it. I liked the the lower-middle class perspective that doesn't seem to be featured too often in children's lit. But I never connected with it for some reason. I don't k...more
Things I Liked:
This was a thoughtful little book about one girl trying to deal with change and challenges in life. It's got a sweet main character, who is coming to terms with some hard things. I loved how it seemed to capture just perfectly the feelings of a girl who finds things are changing around her and she doesn't like that. I remember feeling the same way, about people and places and things. It definitely has charm and can help tweens who might be facing similar struggles to deal with the...more
This was a thoughtful little book about one girl trying to deal with change and challenges in life. It's got a sweet main character, who is coming to terms with some hard things. I loved how it seemed to capture just perfectly the feelings of a girl who finds things are changing around her and she doesn't like that. I remember feeling the same way, about people and places and things. It definitely has charm and can help tweens who might be facing similar struggles to deal with the...more
Never in my life have I seen such a profound case of Newbery-mongering.
Dead mother (Dicey's Song)? Check.
Friendship going through a coming-of-age struggle (When You Reach Me)? Check.
Lovable yet irritating younger sibling who gets into trouble (Kira-Kira)? Check.
A community coming together to fight The Man (Holes)? Check.
FREAKING DANGEROUS RIVER (BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA)? CHECK!!!
The book itself wasn't awful, but it honestly seemed like it tried to touch on every Newbery-loving theme in existen...more
Dead mother (Dicey's Song)? Check.
Friendship going through a coming-of-age struggle (When You Reach Me)? Check.
Lovable yet irritating younger sibling who gets into trouble (Kira-Kira)? Check.
A community coming together to fight The Man (Holes)? Check.
FREAKING DANGEROUS RIVER (BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA)? CHECK!!!
The book itself wasn't awful, but it honestly seemed like it tried to touch on every Newbery-loving theme in existen...more
Mo Wren (said out loud it sounds embarassing) loves her dad and sister and best friend and Fox Street. She also loves the mysterious fox she just knows is hiding in the wilderness at the end of Fox Street. Everything seems okay with the world, even though her mom died a few years ago, until developers want to buy up all the houses on her street and tear them down. Her dad, stuck in a boring city job, considers taking the money to start his own family restaurant. Does he?
The characters were well-...more
The characters were well-...more
Oct 05, 2011
Kristin
rated it
2 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
kids,
humor,
mystery,
reader-s-advisory,
family,
read-in-2011,
summer,
book-talk,
middle-grade
Interesting premise for this story. Set in a working class, diverse neighborhood in Cleveland, Mo Wren lives with her father and younger sister on Fox Street. She loves their life there and the smattering of stores and neighbors around. However, trouble comes when Mo finds out a sleazy developer wants to buy all the houses on Fox Street and turn the area into commercial space. Mo's father, hoping for a different life for his daughters, is considering the offer...
Interesting idea for a story, and...more
Interesting idea for a story, and...more
A book for a thoughtful girl reader willing to read slowly to appreciate the poetic language. I think the book's cover (not depicted above) suggests a younger audience than the book's appeal, which is probably at least grade 5 or even grades 6+ for reading alone.
There is much wisdom in the book--
"Every person you pass on the street, or wait behind in line, or see sitting alone on her porch-every one is summoning up the courage for some battle, whether you can see it or not."
There is much wisdom in the book--
"Every person you pass on the street, or wait behind in line, or see sitting alone on her porch-every one is summoning up the courage for some battle, whether you can see it or not."
Mo Wren has no idea how much will change once this summer begins. It takes a shady developer, fights with her best friend, father and wild little sister as well as the sighting of a fox to help Mo come to terms with all the changes coming her way. Sweet but somewhat predictable story wrapped in love.
Great quote: "In families it couldn't ever truly be against. Maybe beside, or among, or in between. Maybe without. But against, that wouldn't work, not for long."
Great quote: "In families it couldn't ever truly be against. Maybe beside, or among, or in between. Maybe without. But against, that wouldn't work, not for long."
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Sister James Bernard, my first grade teacher, taught me how to read. Our class had 60 children (yes) and we went up and down the long rows, taking turns reading aloud. There was absolutely no reading ahead, which was torture. I was always dying to know What happened next? (though with Dick and Jane, the answer was usually, Not much.) As I grew up, I began to wonder not only what happened, but why,...more
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“The daisies and buttercups nodded in the breeze, like skinny-necked old ladies listening to dance music.
What if necessary evil had an opposite? This is what it would be. This unnecessary good.
For the first time in days, Mo smiled.”
—
1 person liked it
What if necessary evil had an opposite? This is what it would be. This unnecessary good.
For the first time in days, Mo smiled.”
“Being a thinker was a various thing. Sometimes you felt like a turtle, with a nice, private built-in place to shelter. Other times it was like having a bucket stuck on your head, making the world clang and echo and never stop.”
—
1 person liked it
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Jul 15, 2011 03:08pm