FOX WENT OUT ON A CHILLY NIGHT

Set to the beat of a classic folk song (darn near the catchiest tune ever penned on staves), here again is the midnight run by fox seeking take-out food for the den: goose, gray goose. With the skill of a partisan in the French Resistance, fox bags his quarry and makes for the dark woods, townsfolk in hot pursuit, homeward bound to feed the kits. Now approaching 200 years of age, this ditty about bringing home the bacon, with its outlaw edge, long ago proved its worth, so why this offering.'? For one, you can't get enough of a good thing; two, Watson's (editor of A Valentine for You, 1991) reduced, folksy illustrations give a real sense of fox's late night raid. Although they tame the story somewhat, the pictures have a coarseness that gives the classic a heft you can almost bite into.