Finding Foxes

By Allison Blyler

Fourteen glowin gpictures in haiku-like texts evoke the mysterious nature of the fox . . . Blake's detailed gouache ambiguities make beautiful use of changes in light and color to mark the day's passage, and add their own haunting power . . . even young readers will find themselves drawn to this natural, aaresting portrait of a wild creature.--Booklist. Full-color illustrations.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0399222642
• ISBN13: 9780399222641
• Release Date: May 1991
• Publisher: Philomel
• Length: 32 Pages
• Weight: 1.02 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 8.8" x 11.2"
• Age Range: 4 to 8 years
• Grade Range: Preschool to Grade 3

Customer Reviews

Picture book epistemology

This is one of my 3 or 4 favorite children's picture books. The paintings by Robert Blake are beautiful, and perfectly matched to the theme of Allison Blyler's text. In fact, I am not sure whether the pictures illustrate the text, or the text explains the pictures. The illustrations follow a fox from clear daylight, across a nighttime hillside, into mysterious, dark woods. Paralleling this journey, Blyler's poem begins with simple observation of the fox, through increasingly futile contemplation of its elusive nature, to final acceptance of our inability to truly know the fox at all. Like the tao, the fox that we can understand is not the real fox: "I do not know the ways of the fox. I ask the river." Meanwhile we realize that the pictures are not just showing us the fox, but that other foxes are there too: real foxes in the distance, maybe, or "an imagination of foxes" in the shapes of shadows or patterns of branches. Soon we are "finding foxes" not only where Blake has hidden them, but even where they are not there at all. Certainly, young children will fully comprehend neither the subtlety of Blyler's poem, nor the interplay of the text and the illustrations, but they will enjoy the game of looking for foxes everywhere. This is literature--it will reveal to its reader the meanings that the reader is ready to receive, and withhold its other meanings for other readers or other times. All the more reason to read it to children beginning when they are young, so they can appreciate it at all levels over the years. Those looking for a "story" may be dissappointed though: this is lyric, not narrative art. The poet is telling us about herself as much as about the fox. And so is the painter. And both are giving our children a chance to learn about themselves and about the nature of knowledge, as well as knowledge of nature.

Wilderness poem

This book is a long free verse poem about the ways of the fox in nature. There is a lot of elegant descriptive language, but no real story line. Some of the vocabulary could be challenging for younger readers. One scene shows the fox eating an animal, which could be disturbing for some young readers. The font is relatively large, and there are few words (about 200).