In Weston's (Lucky Socks
) cute if rather woolly story, a hen becomes a welcome dinner guest in an unlikely place. When Mommy Fox goes off to find her five little foxes a chicken to eat for supper, she asks them not to leave the den. So of course they do: "They jumped. They romped. They rolled. They tumbled. They crept and leapt." Eventually—as any preschooler could have told them—all this moonlit merriment leads to a major meltdown. Luckily, Mommy Hen discovers the foxes, dries their tears and leads them safely back to their den. Mommy Fox realizes that eating Mommy Hen would be very bad manners indeed, and everyone settles down for a nice pot of vegetable soup. Fatus's (The Story Tree
) naïf paintings bubble with a silly winsomeness, and there's a funny bit involving the little foxes' miscounting of one another, which leads them to the hysterical conclusion that one of their number is irretrievably lost. Ages 4-8. (Apr.)
