Customer Reviews

The Adventures of Reddy Fox (Dover Children's Thrift Classics)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

I just reread the Burgess books at the age of 21, and I still find them as interesting, fun, and educational as I did when my father read them to me when I was little. These books have a timeless quality to them, and once you have read one, you want to read them all. The Aventures of Reddy Fox, being the first of the 20 bedtime story books, grabs your attention in this way. I would definitely recommend all the Burgess books as a must for parents to read to their children. These books are also an interesting way of learning about different species of animals in a way much more fun than studying an encyclopedia.

I`m 8 years old. I got this book for Christmas last year and read it for a book report. IT IS SO GREAT!
These are the reasons I like this book:
1. It's funny
2. It teaches good lessons
3. It made me imagine. (I even wrote my own sequel.)
I have read many Thornton W. Burgess books and this is my favorite. He is my favorite author.

In another one of Thornton Burgess' books on the forest dwelling animals of green meadows and green forest, the mischievous Reddy Fox and his antics take center stage. Burgess uses poetry, humor and mischief to captivate his young audience. The story also teaches many morals, but not in the usual way: the narrator will often not explain why something is right or wrong nor will the characters express it. Instead, Burgess will tell a short tale which involves some sort of wrong doing, and that wrong doing will never go answered for. It is up to the reader to see this, which I think is one of the factors that made this a great book.

We start out the tale with Reddy Fox going to live with his Grandma: Granny Fox, who teaches Reddy how to survive. Granny Fox is fiendishly smart and everybody in the forest knows this. Thus, the scourge of the forest, Reddy Fox, is developed and born. Later in the tale Reddy gets into big trouble, and his grandma and some of Burgess' other characters (out of sympathy, for nobody quite likes Reddy) help him out of it. Reddy and Granny then have to move on account of Reddy's actions.

The main thing that I got out of this story, and that I think parents will appreciate is how some of the other characters in the story who generally don't like Reddy, decide to be nice to him on account of his troubles. Despite the fact that Reddy has at times tried to catch and eat those characters, which Burgess doesn't explain explicitly because after all, this is a children's tale.

This book is 86 pages long, has very descriptive illustrations, easy to read font and a little bit of forest poetry (for lack of a better phrase) which usually opens up a chapter. The book is broken up into 26 chapters that are about 3-4 pages long. This book is meant for readers aged 9-12, but due to its short chapters, it can easily be read aloud to children of a younger age and I'm sure they will enjoy it. My kid does.

Darien Summers, author of The Mischievous Hare, a children's book.

This is a wonderful book and I highly recommend it. However, the prospective buyer should be informed that the illustrations in this Dover edition are NOT by the original illustrator, Harrison Cady. Instead, they are crude redrawings by another artist, Thea Kliros. Although they are better than the illustrations in the Dover titles for which artist Pat Stewart did the crude redrawings, they are not as charming as Cady's work.

Some of the other titles in this Dover series of Thornton Burgess books do have original Harrison Cady illustrations.

To get real Harrison Cady illustrations of this title, you'll have to buy a used book. There were two sets of original Harrison Cady illustrations for this title:
-- Published by Little, Brown, with 6 full-page grayscale illustrations.
-- Published by Little, Brown, with 10 full-page color illustrations.
-- Published by Grosset & Dunlap, with 14 full-page line drawings, including line-drawing versions of all 6 original grayscale illustrations in the Little, Brown editions, plus many smaller line drawings. Also a paperback version of this published under the name "Tempo".

The redrawings in this Dover edition are of the 6 Little, Brown grayscale illustrations.

On the other hand, the cover illustration is one of only four special paintings Cady did of Burgess animals. As far as I know, the four Dover titles that have them are the first editions to use them. The price of the book is worth it for that cover alone.

I recommend the Grosset & Dunlap (and Tempo) editions. Cady did them decades later, after he had grown as an artist. Even though the Grosset & Dunlap line drawings are simpler than the Little, Brown grayscale illustrations, they are more charming. On the other hand, the Little, Brown grayscale illustrations better show Cady's remarkable vision for Burgess' creatures, so if you can get both, that's ideal. But either one is better than the drawings in this Dover edition.

The Little, Brown edition with the 10 full-page color illustrations was done about the same time as the Grosset & Dunlap drawings, but that edition is very rare.

This is great childrens book that show interactions between various forest animals. There are consequences to the animals actions and it shows how people react to various situations.

This book was purchased as a Christmas gift for a Grandaughter..
The book arrived as scheduled.

This was a favorite childhood book of mine, and the reissue is just as much fun as I remembered. It actually has a good moral lesson at the end.

We've enjoyed reading many of Thornton Burgess' books aloud & this one was no exception. Simple with likable characters. Recommend to families with elementary children.