CITY FOXES
Notable,1998, Childrens' Book Council & National Science Teachers' Association

Photographs by Wendy Shattil
Story by Susan J. Tweit

Denver Museum of Natural History/Alaska Northwest Books$16.95, hardcover
0-88240-493-8
32 pages, ages 5 & up

Around the country, wild animals are braving the many challenges of city life. City Foxes reveals the playful interactions of an urban fox family and dramatizes the fortunes of the kits as they grow up in a grassy cemetery. Their real-life adventures include surviving a spring snowstorm; learning about strange new foods, from stale pizza to road-killed duck; and adapting to life on their own. Wendy Shattil's vivid photographs and Susan J. Tweit's accompanying tale teach young readers how these wild canids survive in human environments.

This engaging book describes the lives of six young red foxes born in a city cemetery. Their real life adventures include surviving a snowstorm, learning about strange foods, and adapting to living on their own. The book is a beautiful blending of the talents of the author/naturalist and [the] first woman to be named Wildlife Photographer of the Year. Includes ecology notes and red fox facts for older readers.
- Science and Children, Starred Review

 

From the book:

One cold March night, six baby red foxes were born in the midst of a busy city. Their home was a den dug by their parents, a grayish father fox and a rust-red mother fox, in the lawn at one edge of a cemetery. The young foxes-called kits-were born helpless and with their eyes shut tight.

At first the kits simply nursed and slept. But after their eyes opened, they began to explore the den on wobbly legs. Soon they were playing, nibbling on each other or on their parents, and tumbling over one another.

One afternoon in early April when the kits were sleeping, the mother fox slipped out of the den. She had been inside with the babies for too long. The father stayed behind, snoozing and watching the kits. The mother stretched out in the sun next to the den entrance and began to clean her fur. Lick, lick, lick went her tongue.

In the den, a baby fox woke, hungry. The kit searched around - no mother. The kit whined. Its mother answered from outside.

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