Fox Has a Problem [My First I Can Read!]
by Corey R. Tabor; illus. by the author
Primary    Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins    32 pp.
8/23    9780063277915    $17.99
Paper ed.  9780063277922    $5.99
e-book ed.  9780063277946    $5.99

Fox and his friends are back in this newest installment in Tabor’s Geisel-winning (for Fox the Tiger) beginning-reader series. “Fox has a problem.” When Fox’s kite gets stuck in a tree, he sees many other kites stuck in trees. He brings in a giant fan to blow them down, and it blows all the kites, along with all the leaves on the trees, into Bear’s den. “Now Bear has a problem…” This sets off a chain reaction of questionable choices and humorously disastrous results. Tabor is skilled at letting a controlled vocabulary and tight sentences play it straight while his illustrations bring the comedy. Short statements that lean on sight words and repetition read like wry commentary on Fox’s antics, which are made plain in Tabor’s colored-pencil and watercolor illustrations. The composition here is perfectly planned—not a line or gesture wasted—and the images grow ever more absurd as the pages turn and Fox brings in a giant vacuum to suck up all the leaves and accidentally sucks up Bear and blocks Rabbit’s burrow. By the time readers learn that Fox has “a sharp idea” above an image of Fox’s hand holding a very large, very sharp needle, they’ll be giggling in anticipation of exactly how badly this is all going to end.

From the July/August 2023 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.