The cover of Red Fox Running, a delicately painted head and ruff of a red fox with intent in its clear-eyed stare, a fox seen in the reflected twilight bluing of the sky on snow that’s heavily dusting a field belonging to a distant barn and silo, awakened my deep-seated memory of winter beauty and stillness in New England.
It is the story of a hungry fox on a prowl for prey. As night looms on a freezing cold day, the crust on fields turns the fox’s sure-footed paws raw and bleeding, but it has found a prize. With its body “sore and spent,” it has to circle until it finds the scent home. The art of Wendell Minor* in this large-size book fully fills a page, or two pages, with the story in verse in a few lines of large print. While this is a book for children, I have learned of adults who buy children’s books for themselves, as I do; my reason has been that the simplicity of wisdom and engaging art, whether moving or delighting, evokes my inward response.
The moon is low above frozen water whose distant shore is lit from windows of two small homes. The moon, larger than real, befriends the fox, lighting its way. As the fox
hurries, a furry meal between its teeth leaves a trail by its tail in the snow.
The truth author Eve Bunting gives to her readers is that the red fox must kill in order to feed its family. The warmth of her ending softens this, while the education remains.
Red fox, red fox,
Crawl into your den,
Food for you,
Your mate and cubs,
Eat your fill and then . . .
In a warm, furry heap . . .
Sleep, sleep, sleep.
My realization is, “What prompts a memory from an earlier period in life may, in addition, reveal one’s gentler understanding of life’s realities from the wisdom of intervening years.”
* Eve Bunting, Red Fox Running, illustrated by Wendell Minor (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1993). Eve Bunting is the author of more than 250 books, of which over 100 were written for children, many of them considered to be classics. She has garnered numerous awards for her books over the past 47 years of her writing career. Artist and book designer Wendell Minor has received major awards for his illustrations of more than 50 children’s book as well as for many of the cover designs for his work on over 2500 adult books. His cover portrait of Harry Truman for one of these books hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC.
Courtesy of Wendell Minor