Although I found Fox by searching for "most hated children's books", I jumped in with both feet by reading it to my four-year-old in the bedtime-reading lineup. That was, perhaps, a mistake. I could feel his discomfort by the second page. At the end he was about to explode into dismayed questions, and I was not prepared at that late hour to turn Fox into the proper lesson that it needed to be. I was forced toreach for some standard fluff book as a distraction.
That said, Fox is now on my wishlist. It is a parable so deliciously and horrifyingly dark that I boggle to think a publisher was willing to risk it. Good for them! If there is room in the picture book world for this, then there is certainly room for what I want to write about.
Here is the spoiler:
A one-eyed dog rescues a bird from a fire. She is so burned that she can never fly again.
This tragedy happens by the second or third page. Already by this point my son was squirming with discomfort, and so was I.
The dog and the bird become the closest of friends. Together, they run! The bird sees for the dog, and the dog's running becomes the bird's flight.
The writing is absolutely touching, by the way. Margaret Wild had me by the heart. But even these feel-good bits were flooded with tragedy of Greek proportions.
Then along comes the fox, who is enthusiastically welcomed into their friendship by the dog. But the bird fears the fox, and the dog ignores her fears. The fox then drives a wedge into the friendship by secretly whispering to the bird that he can run faster with her than the dog can. Ultimately, hurt by the dog's ignoring of her fears, she gives in and goes for a ride on the fox. He runs and runs, dumps her far away in a desert, and leaves her with a nasty comment about how she will now get to understand the fox's loneliness.
The bird contemplates giving up and dying on the spot. (And this is a picture book!) But then she thinks of how lonely her friend the dog must be. And so she resolves to find her way back home.
After having read this as a bedtime story to a child who was not yet ready for its deep themes, I can't help but think that Fox is a fire hose among squirt guns. It is an immensely powerful parable that does not make any attempt to spell out what lesson the reader should take from it. I would argue that Fox would be best when used as a teaching tool, read out loud by an adult who is armed with a lesson plan, or at the very least who is armed with some time to answer questions.
As with the other disliked children's parables I have dug up, this story could be interpreted several ways. But I can't help but be amused and horrified at what seems like the obvious interpretation: Fox is about adultery.
Look how vulnerable that lion looks! I haven't given Silverstein enough credit as an artist. That's a picture of Lafcadio the lion realizing for the first time that he is naked. But it also sums up the way a reader is left feeling at the end of the book.
Spoiler:
Lafcadio is a wild and innocent lion who eats a hunter, picks up his gun, and learns to shoot. A man from a circus recruits him, and Lafcadio subsequently becomes rich and famous in the human world. Lafcadio learns to walk, dress, and eat, and live like a human. Ultimately he and everyone around him forgets that he is a lion. Lafcadio becomes jaded and weary of his experiences, and ends up back in Africa as a hunter of lions. One of the lions reminds Lafcadio of who he really is. Suddenly, Lafcadio fits in to neither world. He runs away and is never seen from again.
Gulp! It's a fun little ride up until the lion's disenchantment with his human life. Is this a cautionary tale about forgetting one's roots? Surely if I had read this as a child, I would have mulled over it for years, and likely my conclusions would have had a profound impact on me. Here is what Silverstein himself has to say about happy endings:
“Happy endings, magic solutions in children’s books create alienation in the child who reads them. The child asks ‘Why don’t I have this happiness thing you’re telling me about?’ and comes to think when his joy stops that he has failed, that it won’t come back.”
There is a spectrum in children's literature. On one end are the comfort books - those fluffy things you can grab at bedtime to sooth the kids to sleep. On the other end are the stories so disturbing that a child will hide a book or lock it in a cage in order to prevent themselves from being subjected to it again. Adventure or didactic tales are more likely to end up nearer to the disturbing end of the spectrum.
Of course, a story that is just disturbing enough to be exciting for one child can well be beyond the pale for another. As much as I am intrigued by these outliers in the picture book field, I don't believe that a story with a happy ending is inherently the bad thing that Silverstein considered it to be. I think a story can be lasting and profound without pounding its readers into a quivering emotional heap. I'll have to keep my eyes peeled for books that offer a bumpy ride with a nice soft pillow at the end.
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