VIXIE, The Story of a Little Fox

With the same respectful intimacy that characterized Michael Fox's The Wolf (KR, p. 62, J-20) -though without, it seems to us, the advantage of the wolf family's inherent fascination, the author reconstructs the life of a female fox from the time that she is left at six months to fend for herself until a year later when she leaves her own four cubs. The villain is human -- an ignorant college graduate who resents being a farmer, does not understand animals, and interprets all of Vixen's survival maneuvers as personal insults -- but Fox also provides a model in the family who buys his farm toward the end and who ""wanted to live with nature."" And of course the behavior of the foxes themselves is intelligently observed, and reported with telling concision.