In another one of Thornton Burgess' books on the forest dwelling animals of green meadows and green forest, the mischievous Reddy Fox and his antics take center stage. Burgess uses poetry, humor and mischief to captivate his young audience. The story also teaches many morals, but not in the usual way: the narrator will often not explain why something is right or wrong nor will the characters express it. Instead, Burgess will tell a short tale which involves some sort of wrong doing, and that wrong doing will never go answered for. It is up to the reader to see this, which I think is one of the factors that made this a great book.
We start out the tale with Reddy Fox going to live with his Grandma: Granny Fox, who teaches Reddy how to survive. Granny Fox is fiendishly smart and everybody in the forest knows this. Thus, the scourge of the forest, Reddy Fox, is developed and born. Later in the tale Reddy gets into big trouble, and his grandma and some of Burgess' other characters (out of sympathy, for nobody quite likes Reddy) help him out of it. Reddy and Granny then have to move on account of Reddy's actions.
The main thing that I got out of this story, and that I think parents will appreciate is how some of the other characters in the story who generally don't like Reddy, decide to be nice to him on account of his troubles. Despite the fact that Reddy has at times tried to catch and eat those characters, which Burgess doesn't explain explicitly because after all, this is a children's tale.
This book is 86 pages long, has very descriptive illustrations, easy to read font and a little bit of forest poetry (for lack of a better phrase) which usually opens up a chapter. The book is broken up into 26 chapters that are about 3-4 pages long. This book is meant for readers aged 9-12, but due to its short chapters, it can easily be read aloud to children of a younger age and I'm sure they will enjoy it. My kid does.
Darien Summers, author of The Mischievous Hare, a children's book.