Rosemary treasures the rabbit she named ``Annabelle...the most beautiful name I had ever heard.'' When Annabelle disappears from her outdoor hutch, Papa takes his gun to hunt a fox that also threatens the hens; but when Rosemary sees it--``winter- thin, butterscotch-pale. Its coat...ragged, its body lean and hungry'' in the moonlight, she shouts ``No!'' before he can shoot. Though she knows the fox took Annabelle, he's not as ``big as a tiger'' and ``strong as a bear,'' as she'd imagined, but needy and vulnerable. It would be interesting to compare this honest, beautifully cadenced book--and its luminous, sensitive, roughly rendered art--with Red Fox Running (Clarion, 1993, received too late for review), where Wendell Minor's exquisitely detailed depiction of the fox belies Eve Bunting's description of a hunter struggling to survive and capturing scrupulously anonymous prey. (Picture book. 4-8)
