The Fox and the Hen

In this landscape picture book by a French illustrator and writer, a hen naively presents her very first egg to a fox in exchange for a big fat worm. Almost too late, the other farm animals apprise her of her unmotherliness, and the contrite fowl leads a campaign to recover the egg before Red Fox can devour it. The bold and simple text records the animals’ sequence of bartering attempts and the hungry fox’s matching refusals in a call and response pattern, with sinister but humorous modulations at each turn. The full-page illustrations, in rustic, ruddy tints of terracotta and Red Leicester, face the text with depictions of the animals’ forlorn pleas. The pictures themselves mirror this alternation: on the left, the contrite but determined hen, supported by the sacrifices of her huddled community; on the right, the angular, smirking, static predator. This is an attractive and rhythmically structured book. Its matching play of words and pictures eventually builds to an entertaining climax that children will find reassuring.