by Moe Zilla

Created on: April 04, 2010

"One upon a time," begins the kindly teacher, "in woods that aren't so very far away..."

She's telling "The Tale of Tricky Fox," a classic folk talk, in a colorful children's book by Jim Aylesworth. Interestingly, Aylesworth has been a first-grade teacher himself for more than 25 years, and the book's jacket says he learned the storytelling elements that children like best: good read-aloud sounds, rhythms, and rhymes. And he dedicates the book "with loves to the teachers, who are not so easy to fool!"

A young fox brags that he's clever enough to steal a fat pig. (Even though his brother points out that a fox can't even CARRY a fat pig.) But Tricky Fox pretends to be an old fox, tired and feeble, and cons a grey-haired lady into letting him sleep by her fireplace. Tricky enters with a log in a sack, but then burns the log in the night. Then he tells the lady his sack had contained bread - and demands that she replace the bread which disappeared in the night.

"I'm so clever - tee-hee-hee!
Trick, trick, tricky! Yes, siree!
Snap your fingers. Slap your knee.
Human folks aren't smart like me."

It's an old Massachusetts folk tale, according to an author's note at the beginning of the book, and the story was first published in 1897 by Clifton Johnson (one of the first Americans to gather Anglo-American folklore). And this version has the look of a classic storybook, thanks to the old-fashioned drawings by Barbara McClintock.  She says she draws her inspiration from Wilhelm Busch, the same 19th-century German artist who inspired much of Maurice Sendak's work.

The illustrations really convey the personality of the young, rascally fox. McClinton wanted to present Tricky "as though he were a character performing his antics onstage," according to the book's jacket. She used two mischievous little boys who lived next door as her models, "because they were as animated and 'full of beans' as Tricky Fox himself." And her drawings of the character are often surrounded by white space, as though he's taken over the pages of the book!

Tricky pulls his empty-sack con, raising his demands each time from bread to a chicken, and then finally a pig. But his last mark is a school teacher who, it turns out, really is hard to fool. In the end, she does "replace" the contents of the fox's empty sack.

But instead of a pig, she sends him off with her pet bulldog!

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