I have a deep love for art that is excellent without being showy, and so I find myself in love with Sergio Ruzzier’s Fox + Chick: The Party and Other Stories. The Caldecott criteria include providing a child with a primarily visual experience, and here it is. Even children who can’t read but take a few moments to examine the dust jacket and cover will begin to glean elements of character, tone, and theme. On the jacket, we meet our main characters: Fox, serene and composed in the foreground; and Chick, demanding attention with a photobomb wave. The cloth cover deepens our understanding of character and relationship — Chick’s shade of yellow dominates, while Fox’s lovely shade of gentle red-orange wraps the spine, holding the book together. The bonus image shows Fox irritated with Chick for hitching a ride on his tail, foreshadowing the core personality conflict that fuels the plot. This is picture book art doing its job perfectly.

This is a picture book, a beginning reader, a comic — again, all clear from the cover. The shape says picture book, the careful hand lettering says beginning reader, and the speech bubble says comic. The intended audience won’t give genre a thought; they’ll just pick the book up and read it, which is the point. The harmony of the way Ruzzier blends genre elements throughout the book echoes the harmony between these two very different personalities, best demonstrated in a full-page spread that concludes the second story, in which Fox and Chick share a meal in Fox’s delightfully lived-in kitchen. Let’s pause and notice the comfort and beauty in the details of this spread — crumbs on the counter, cabinet door slightly ajar, a floor tile partly missing. Familiar quirks are a core element of any true bond; friendship cannot exist without flaws; and maybe Fox seems a little more put together, but he’s not perfect either. The most important things we’re learning come from the pictures, not the text.

Ruzzier’s art displays tension, too, in contrasts between sharp and soft, mirroring the gentle edge we see play out between these friends in each of their three stories. Ruzzier uses a lot of elongated triangles blunted at their sharpest point — Fox’s ears, Fox’s snout, Chick’s beak. The ink lines are strong but uneven and the colors, saturated but soft. The watercolors bleed through the lines here and there. The grey washes add shadow and depth to that which is otherwise bright. This is character and theme rendered visually, reminding me why I’ve always insisted on calling them beginning readers, not easy readers. There’s a lot going on in this small book.

I suppose this is more something that wins a Geisel than a Caldecott, but Ruzzier’s art checks all the Caldecott boxes. I think it’s the word "eminence" in the criteria that people get hung up on, thinking eminence and laughter can’t be friends, but they can. Personally, I think the Caldecott could use a few more parties in bathrooms, and there’s eminence in art that so seamlessly uses each visual element to show us how imperfection and tension can live in beautiful harmony. Look around — it is no small thing for human beings to learn how to truly see themselves and one another, to learn how to embrace difference and the things that irritate. This book is light and fun, yes, but Fox and Chick also teach us about being human. I hope the Caldecott committee takes that seriously.

[Read the Horn Book Magazine review here.]