‘She had never felt less afraid. Perhaps, she thought, that’s what love does. It’s not there to make you feel special. It’s to make you brave. It was like a ration pack in the desert, she thought, like a box of matches in a dark wood. Love and courage, thought Sophie: two words for the same thing. You didn’t need the person to be there with you, even, perhaps. Just alive, somewhere. It was what her mother had always been. A place to put down her heart. A resting stop to recover her breath. A set of stars and maps.’
Rooftoppers, by Katherine Rundell
The Fox and the Star by Coralie Bickford-Smith is a beguiling, enchanting fable of Fox and his only friend, Star.
When Michael first finds Skellig lying in the about-to-fall-down garage at the bottom of his garden, the frail creature is wearing a black suit and is covered in spiderwebs and dead bluebottles and beetles, with only Arthur Itis to keep him company.