Fox, A Circle of Life Story is timeless, illustrated book gold

Think of one of Salt N’ Pepa’s biggest hits, but replace the word ‘sex’ with the much less salacious word ‘death’. Now, let’s talk about death. Then, make the book as much, if not more about life, and you’ve got a great overview of one of the best-illustrated books of the year, Fox: A Circle of Life Story. Also, much like D.J. Spinderella song, its misdirection makes people think it’s mainly about one thing but instead gets them thinking, or talking about something that otherwise might be challenging or off-putting.

You see, Fox isn’t exclusively about death however, it’s probably the first thing that young readers will recall about the book. It starts with a mom, with her infant child in her arms and her early elementary-aged child in front of them walking in the freshly snowed forest. This page uses the always dependable rule of thirds to suck readers through to the next page where we meet the mom fox. She’s searching the undergrowth for food for her young kits.

As they emerge from the den, the kits play, hunt, smell things, scrape the dirt to see beetles and traverse the countryside learning how to be foxes. As any good science student knows, there are learned behaviors and inherited traits, and these kits have things that they need to practice. The kits are growing and the seasons are changing. The art in Fox beautifully illustrates the subtle palette changes as the muddy burrow surrenders to the white background and the spring colors.

One evening the family is hunting and just after the kits had crossed the road mom fox gets struck by a car.  Her limp body gets thrown from the street into the forest. The kits sniff the ground for a moment and then go back home. The seasons change and as summer yields to fall the book shifts to its subtitle, A Circle of Life Story. A pile of leaves have collected on things that are on the forest floor, while mites, birds feed their families and beetles find a place to lay their eggs. What was old has paved a path for the new, the sun keeps on shining, and in corner of the forest, you just might see an orange foxtail if you look hard enough.

Fox: A Circle of Life Story is about living, but it addresses the elephant in the room, which is death. This is a very tricky concept to teach elementary ages. Granted they see it every day, from the decaying leaves in your front yard, to the turkey vultures cleaning up the squirrels who weren’t quick enough at playing Frogger. It’s important to point out that Fox deals exclusively with animal death in a natural environment. This does not deal with human death, but the concept of loss, especially in how these foxes deal with will certainly help the human-to-human grasp of it.

When the death happens in Fox, it’s all about decomposition. An illustrated book on this topic seems like a publishing dare that only the most STEM-minded would accept. There is a certain deftness, care and love that author Isabel Thomas and illustrator Daniel Egneus have ingrained into Fox. They don’t water down the content. There is love, family and real relationships at are drawn into the animals. When the mother fox dies it hurts, and you can see it in the subtle ways that the kits move their paws. As a reader, especially a young reader, you want to go back a page to see if you can stop the car from hitting her, but you can’t.

Life, just like the pages of Fox: A Circle of Life Story has to keep moving.  This is a smart illustrated book that will get young readers thinking. They might not share with you their thoughts, but there will be something happening behind the curtain. That’s the long-term game plan for the book. The short game plan is that the book is poetic, a joy to read and enchanting to look at. It’ll be in your forever bookshelf long after the kids who grew up with it have left.

Fox, A Circle of Life Story is written by Isabel Thomas with illustrations by Daniel Egneus and available on Bloomsbury Children’s Books.

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