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4.24 AVERAGE
4.24 AVERAGE
For many a kid this will indeed be a scary story indeed! As an adult my heart just broke throughout wanting to protect these sweet foxes!
Within the first couple of chapters I was going, woah, this is for children? But in a good this-is-horrifying kind of way. It is something else looking at rabies and taxidermy from the eyes of innocent fox cubs. The whole involvement of Beatrix Potter threw me off but she as well made for yet another memorable foe in a land of many dangers.
I picked up Scary Stories for Young Foxes on two different occasions at the library in 2019 and put it back on the shelf. For whatever reason, I just wasn't interested. When I saw it had been named a 2020 Newbery Honor Book I was still skeptical but decided I would make an effort to read it. I AM SO GLAD I DID! This was a 5-star read for me. I loved it! I almost read the whole thing in one sitting. (I fell asleep and had to finish the last 30 pages the following morning.)
The story is brilliantly structured as follows: seven fox kits are begging their mother for a scary story, rejecting all the ones she suggests as simply too tame; they want a REALLY SCARY story. Mother tells them about an old Storyteller who has many scary stories to tell...if they can handle it. With the wonderful (and sometimes foolish) bravery of youth the kits sneak out at night to seek out the Storyteller. The Storyteller tells them much can be learned from truly scary stories--but only if you can stay for the entire story. If you are too afraid and leave before the end, the story will always remain scary and you will never be able to receive the wisdom the story has to offer. Of course all the kits insist they are brave enough to hear the whole story.
The Storyteller then tells several different tales, each one building on the one before it so that all of the smaller stories taken as a whole reveal themselves as one overarching storyline. After each of the shorter stories, one of the kits is too frightened to continue listening and finds an excuse to return to their burrow (and their mother). The moments in the present with the listening kits are stitched seamlessly in between the stories, acting as the joints between the bones of the same appendage.
Uly and Mia are exactly the kind of warm-hearted, courageous, tenacious-in-tough-situations heroes about whom we love to hear stories. The villains--especially Mr. Scratch and Beatrix Potter(!)--are the deliciously horrible kind we love to root against! Scary Stories for Young Foxes is a bizarre blend of The Incredible Journey and the original Grimm's Fairy Tales: there are both animal survival and magical realism adventures.
That said, this will not be a 5-star read for everyone. I am a huge fan of the original Grimm's Fairy Tales, which includes their tradition of clearly defining good vs. evil and having some graphic obstacles for heroes and violent consequences for villains. If those original Fairy Talespunch your squeamish buttons, then Scary Stories for Young Foxes probably will too.
For readers young and old who enjoy truly chilling tales and the very concrete sense of justice (good is rewarded, evil is punished) present in old-school fairy tales I highly recommend you run out and get Scary Stories for Young Foxes as fast as you can! I'm glad I did!
The story is brilliantly structured as follows: seven fox kits are begging their mother for a scary story, rejecting all the ones she suggests as simply too tame; they want a REALLY SCARY story. Mother tells them about an old Storyteller who has many scary stories to tell...if they can handle it. With the wonderful (and sometimes foolish) bravery of youth the kits sneak out at night to seek out the Storyteller. The Storyteller tells them much can be learned from truly scary stories--but only if you can stay for the entire story. If you are too afraid and leave before the end, the story will always remain scary and you will never be able to receive the wisdom the story has to offer. Of course all the kits insist they are brave enough to hear the whole story.
The Storyteller then tells several different tales, each one building on the one before it so that all of the smaller stories taken as a whole reveal themselves as one overarching storyline. After each of the shorter stories, one of the kits is too frightened to continue listening and finds an excuse to return to their burrow (and their mother). The moments in the present with the listening kits are stitched seamlessly in between the stories, acting as the joints between the bones of the same appendage.
Uly and Mia are exactly the kind of warm-hearted, courageous, tenacious-in-tough-situations heroes about whom we love to hear stories. The villains--especially Mr. Scratch and Beatrix Potter(!)--are the deliciously horrible kind we love to root against! Scary Stories for Young Foxes is a bizarre blend of The Incredible Journey and the original Grimm's Fairy Tales: there are both animal survival and magical realism adventures.
That said, this will not be a 5-star read for everyone. I am a huge fan of the original Grimm's Fairy Tales, which includes their tradition of clearly defining good vs. evil and having some graphic obstacles for heroes and violent consequences for villains. If those original Fairy Talespunch your squeamish buttons, then Scary Stories for Young Foxes probably will too.
For readers young and old who enjoy truly chilling tales and the very concrete sense of justice (good is rewarded, evil is punished) present in old-school fairy tales I highly recommend you run out and get Scary Stories for Young Foxes as fast as you can! I'm glad I did!
I was not prepared for how CREEPY this book was. I started reading it last night, and before I knew it I’d finished the whole thing. Magical storytelling and just so beautifully written. I found the parts with Beatrix Potter to be incredibly disturbing (what?!!!?) and other parts were heartwarming. I can’t wait to share with my middle school students who always ask for scary stories. Ages 10 and up.
Gobbled this engaging book up like Uly gobbles up a squirrel. Super tense and suspenseful kids horror story told with a framing narrative. The ending was very sweet and heartwarming. I'm surprised that more people haven't discovered this book, considering the well-deserved Newberry Honor it received.
Total immersion into the lives of foxes! The imagery is perfect. It captures the world from the perspective of the foxes and creates the atmosphere as the stories move from suspenseful to terrifying to comforting. The story moves through various settings with different villains similar to Watership Down. The individual personalities for the main character foxes, Mia and Uly, are well developed and realistic. The book champions persistence and loyalty and family and the value of stories.
I just didn’t like it. I can acknowledge the beauty and effectiveness of the fox-POV descriptions. And it’s true that I came to admire Mia and Uly very much. But the story wavered from the beginning with its tale of instant rabies transmission, lost me with the section about Beatrix Potter, turned ridiculous when there was a swamp full of alligators near to Beatrix Potter’s home, and collapsed entirely when the established in-story rule about rabies (that it instantly turns its victims mad) didn’t apply in the very last section of the story.
One more complaint: There are several pieces of the story-within-a-story that Mia could not have known. There's the first, truly frightening moment when Roa thinks he's safe from Ms. Vix and then sees that his little brother will be able to attach him, and later, the moment when Mr. Scratch stalks the top of the cliffs. How could Mia know, and share, either of these things? There's nothing in the text to indicate that she's embellishing -- it just feels like authorial oversight.
I might have liked the story more, or at least forgiven it some of its flaws, if it hadn’t won a Newbery Honor. This was by no means one of the most distinguished texts for children published in 2019 that I have read.
One more complaint: There are several pieces of the story-within-a-story that Mia could not have known. There's the first, truly frightening moment when Roa thinks he's safe from Ms. Vix and then sees that his little brother will be able to attach him, and later, the moment when Mr. Scratch stalks the top of the cliffs. How could Mia know, and share, either of these things? There's nothing in the text to indicate that she's embellishing -- it just feels like authorial oversight.
I might have liked the story more, or at least forgiven it some of its flaws, if it hadn’t won a Newbery Honor. This was by no means one of the most distinguished texts for children published in 2019 that I have read.
Tense and dark as promised, Heidicker writes an animal story of danger and survival that's gripping from the beginning. Minus some truly uninspired choices in the middle and storylines that converge perhaps too early, Scary Stories is a spooky, captivating middle-grade fox book that doesn't overstay or overexplain. A good read for those that appreciate the harrowing life of wild animals.