Bestselling writer Kiran Millwood Hargrave and illustrator Tom de Freston from Oxford have been awarded the 2023 James Cropper Wainwright Prize for their book Leila and the Blue Fox (2022, Hachette Children’s Group). It’s the story of a young fox and a girl on an unforgettable Arctic adventure, based on the true story of a fox who walked two thousand miles from Norway to Canada in seventy-six days. The judges praised Kiran’s ‘exceptional writing’ and Tom’s ‘hauntingly beautiful illustrations’ in a book that will ‘inspire young people to engage with the natural world’ in the face of climate change.  

De Freston says of his illustrations in this book, which featured in his 2023 solo exhibition SMALL WORLDS at No 20 Arts:

“Paint is the perfect medium for replicating ice – it records time, holding in its layers every impression, every mark left, even if it is then covered, nothing is fully erased. It shifts, breaks, freezes. The perfection of a blank page interrupted by oils and inks, allowed to bloom into organic shapes that read as clouds or icebergs. And then, collaged in, are figures: of Fox, of people, of polar bears. In many ways these images are about trespass, ecological change, and how our perception of the land is limited compared its perception of us.”