Fox Tails

April 30, 2012
Lowry (The Pea Blossom) combines four fables into one seamless story about a pesky fox and his animal acquaintances. Mr. Fox starts the day with an empty fridge and a hankering for grapes. Try as he might, he cannot reach a dangling cluster, so he proclaims the grapes sour and cons a crow out of her cheese instead. After this victory, "the fox was so busy congratulating himself" that he falls into a well. To escape, he tricks a thirsty goat into serving as his stepladder, chuckling at its misfortune. Fed up with Mr. Fox's unkindness, the goat and crow "seek revenge" and meet a stork who has her own beef with the trickster. Lowry draws homespun gouache-and-pencil pictures on expansive white backgrounds. Her graceful illustrations introduce the humanlike animal characters without overpowering the foundational fables, and amiable detailsâlike a portrait at the stork's house of her with an infantâsupply mild humor. An unassuming author's note provides concise morals to the stories and pictures the stork, crow, and goat sharing a grin about Mr. Fox. Everyone emerges unscathed but wiser in this easygoing retelling. Ages 4â8.

March 1, 2012
Four of Aesop's familiar fables feature wily fox shamelessly tricking his fellow creatures, followed by their gleeful retaliation, strung together in one continuous if episodic narrative. First, hungry fox fails to retrieve a luscious bunch of grapes from a tree. To save his dignity, fox announces the grapes "are quite sour," proving it's "easy to scorn what you cannot get." Then, fox encounters crow with cheese in her beak. When fox cleverly asks if crows really do have amazing voices, crow opens her mouth to caw, dropping the cheese. As he gobbles crow's cheese, fox moralizes, "never trust a flatterer." In his smugness at this victory, fox stumbles into a well--and then tricks hapless goat into helping him escape. Leaving goat in the well, fox warns to "look before you leap." And finally, "one bad turn deserves another," when goat, crow and stork give fox his just deserts. Lowry cleverly incorporates the four fables into a single story sequence with each fable adding to the theme of fox's self-centered dishonesty. Pale gouache-and-pencil illustrations in muted greens, browns and greys provide a subdued, understated backdrop to fox's self-serving antics while emphasizing the very human behavior of each animal character. Four fable favorites cleverly repackaged. (author's note, morals) (Picture book. 4-8)

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April 1, 2012

K-Gr 2-A fox has one busy day and gets his just deserts in this smart joining of four familiar tales: "The Fox and the Grapes," "The Fox and the Crow," The Fox and the Goat," and "The Fox and the Stork." Lowry's tone is at once contemporary and faithful to the economical Aesop accounts of the opportunistic animal. She adds small opening and concluding scenes to present a well-knit cumulative tale. The broad gouache scenes are a deft match for the narrative in simplicity and clever detail. As the fox decides the grapes are sour anyway he's watched by an unmentioned observer, the stork who will play a big role later. The fox next meets the gullible crow and later becomes so busy congratulating himself on flattering her out of her chunk of cheese that he stumbles into a stinky empty well. A passing goat is pressed into joining him and providing his escape. Readers will enjoy humorous innuendo in many scenes-the expressive frogs in the well, the shadowy animal figures in tree roots and well walls, the cookbook titles on stork's bookshelves. She's having the fox over as a supper guest and invites the crow and the goat to come and watch as she repays his bad hosting. That soup served in tall narrow jars has the crow and goat rolling on the floor in laughter and sends the angry fox stalking out the door, heading "home to bed hungry." Though incorporated in each episode, the usual moral doesn't always stand out as a lesson, but it is listed again in the author's brief closing note on Aesop. These cheerful encounters offer wide appeal for reading aloud and will be equally fun for early readers new to Aesop and those already familiar with the venerable tales.-Margaret Bush, Simmons College, Boston

Copyright 2012 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 15, 2012
Grades K-2 *Starred Review* Four familiar fablesThe Fox and the Grapes, The Fox and the Crow, The Fox and the Goat, and The Fox and the Storkeffortlessly combine to form a single integrated story. The action flows far more smoothly than might be expected from such an amalgam, and it reads like a single episodic tale, in part because a series of encounters featuring a fox is so common a folkloric motif. Softly colored illustrations in pencil and gouache have a wry and cutely mannered look, as evidenced in the prep schoolstyle sweater sported by the fox. There's no slapstick here; rather, a more subtle humor shines through, especially in background details such as the stack of trickster storybooks on Fox's kitchen bookshelf. In fact, the art yields many such rewards for observant readers: daffodils, tree trunks, and rocks reveal delicate facial features; shrubs and hills integrate batiklike animal patterns in two shades of green; and much more. The stork, pictured at the outset watching Fox approach the grapes, helps tie the beginning to the end, when it is Stork who finally delivers Fox his comeuppance. A creative premise, beautifully executed.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)