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From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)

In this newest installment of the Fox books for beginning readers, Fox creates a series of escalating, and funny, problems. It all starts when Fox gets his kite stuck in a tree. (“It is not a new problem,” says the narrator on the next page, where an illustration shows many kites hanging in the trees.) “But Fox has an idea. / A big idea.” Fox wheels in an enormous fan, which blows all the fallen leaves (and several kites) into Bear’s den, creating a new problem. As a solution to Bear’s dirty den, Fox brings in a very large vacuum that sucks up everything (including Bear), but inadvertently plugs the hole to Rabbit’s warren (yet another problem). Logically, Fox pops the vacuum bag with a pin, launching all the animals into the nearby trees. The animals realize they have a Fox problem and ask him to go away before a sage woodland Elephant arrives to save the day with a solution for everyone. (Ages 4-7)

CCBC Choices 2024 © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2024. Used with permission.

From Horn Book

July 1, 2023
Fox and his friends are back in this newest installment in Tabor's Geisel-winning (for Fox the Tiger) beginning-reader series. "Fox has a problem." When Fox's kite gets stuck in a tree, he sees many other kites stuck in trees. He brings in a giant fan to blow them down, and it blows all the kites, along with all the leaves on the trees, into Bear's den. "Now Bear has a problem..." This sets off a chain reaction of questionable choices and humorously disastrous results. Tabor is skilled at letting a controlled vocabulary and tight sentences play it straight while his illustrations bring the comedy. Short statements that lean on sight words and repetition read like wry commentary on Fox's antics, which are made plain in Tabor's colored-pencil and watercolor illustrations. The composition here is perfectly planned -- not a line or gesture wasted -- and the images grow ever more absurd as the pages turn and Fox brings in a giant vacuum to suck up all the leaves and accidentally sucks up Bear and blocks Rabbit's burrow. By the time readers learn that Fox has "a sharp idea" above an image of Fox's hand holding a very large, very sharp needle, they'll be giggling in anticipation of exactly how badly this is all going to end. Adrienne L. Pettinelli

(Copyright 2023 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)