Daddy Mojo reads: Fox and Hen Together by Beatrice Rodriguez

Earlier this year we reviewed a very charming book called The Chicken Thief.  It’s a wordless book that tells the story of a fox, a hen and their forbidden love affair.  Of course any book that has a happy ending, what with the fox and the hen living together, has a high likelihood of producing a sequel. Fox and Hen Together picks up with the two of them living together.  Hen is holding an egg and Fox is complaining that there isn’t any food in the house.  Keep in mind that this is a wordless book, so you need to bring your imagination.

Hen leaves the tree house with her friend the crab.  They start out looking for food and find themselves on an adventure.  They find food, are almost someone’s meal and then escape.  Will the crab and Hen make it back home to Fox and what about their baby? We gave the book to an eight year old and a ten year old and had two very different reactions.  One of them like the drawings and could easily follow the story, filling in the blanks and adding bits of background here and there.

The other youth didn’t like the fact that there weren’t any words to the story and didn’t want to misinterpret the work of the author. We explained to the second youth that the absence of words meant that the author wanted us to tell our own story within her guidelines.  However, by then our youth focus group had moved on, but the elder one did come back later to look at the book again.

If you liked The Chicken Thief, you’ll like Fox and Hen Together.  The drawings in Fox and Hen Together are sharp, happy and easy to grasp.  Don’t spend too much time worrying about the logistics of a fox and hen relationship.  It’s a cute story that’s good for children with an imagination or adults that like comics that tell a simple story.

The drawings in Fox and Hen Together are reminiscent of Mutts.  The main characters are crisp, while the background has a semi clear, painted water color feel about them.

So is this a book for children or for adults?   It’s for either of them.  If your children like stories that are self paced with great illustrations, then it’s for the kids.  If you like creative stories that let your adult mind wander about the possibilities of a hen and crab going fishing and catching a giant sea serpent; then it’s for you. Fox and Hen Together have soft, cartoon oriented Mojo that is nice to look at when you need to get away from it all.

 

Daddy Mojo reads is a review series on books.  Sometimes it’ll be a children’s book and other times it will be a popular fiction or non-fiction book.  I’m not scared to stop a book halfway through if it’s losing me or just plain isn’t interesting-life is too short to waste on a bad book.  In this case Enchanted Lion Books did provide us with a promotional copy of the book.