The Big Bad Fox
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5.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Fox? No one, it seems.
The fox dreams of being the terror of the barnyard. But no one is intimidated by him, least of all the hens—when he picks a fight with one, he always ends up on the losing end. Even the wolf, the most fearsome beast of the forest, can’t teach him how to be a proper predator. It looks like the fox will have to spend the rest of his life eating turnips.
But then the wolf comes up with the perfect scheme. If the fox steals some eggs, he could hatch the chicks himself and raise them to be a plump, juicy chicken dinner. Unfortunately, this plan falls apart when three adorable chicks hatch and call the fox Mommy.
Beautifully rendered in watercolor by Benjamin Renner, The Big Bad Fox is a hilarious and surprisingly tender parable about parenthood that's sure to be a hit with new parents (and their kids too).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
French graphic novelist Renner's hapless fox doesn't like to kill prey, and he's putty in the hands of the local wolf, who talks him into stealing three eggs from a farm to be eaten once they hatch. "It's simple," the wolf promises. "You just put them in your mouth and chew. I'll show you." Renner's cramped, spidery lines and diminutive vignettes convey an ever-changing kaleidoscope of expressions on the face of the fox: dismay, shock, sheepish embarrassment. Not unpredictably, the three fluffy chicks grow to love their parent ("If Mommy's the Big Bad Fox, then we're Little Bad Foxes!"), and the fox, in spite of himself, finds that he's attached to them, too. Although a couple of the episodes skew too long, Renner's tone hits the sweet spot between snarkiness and sentimentality, and Johnson's translation is seamless. The supporting characters on the farm deserve recognition, too, such as the hen who organizes her colleagues to beat the pulp out of foxes, and the lazy hound who tries replacing the stolen eggs with refrigerator equivalents. Ages 7 11.
