The fox and chicken triology

The French publishing house Editions Autrement published a series of silent books a few years ago. Amongst the books was this triology by Béatrize Rodrigues, that proved to be best-sellers: They have been translated into several other languages and been published in many different editions.

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My editions are published in two different languages, but it is easy to spot the connection between the books even without being able to read the titles. Our heroes, the fox and the hen, are pictured on all three covers, and they are all in the same long, narrow format. It is the perfect choice of format, as all three books are about being on the move, and when you open the long, narrow book you end up having a very long space for the road, sea, forests of mushrooms and all other distances that are to be travelled through.

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The first book starts off with a big drama: A fox interrupts a cozy, countryside breakfast by stealing the hen! The following pages are a wild chase through forests and mountains and over the sea, where the bear, hare and rooster try to rescue the hen. In the end, the chasers realize that this was not a kidnapping, it was love. The bear and the rabbit are both charmed by this, but the rooster is not very happy... The next book is about the rooster, who finds happiness again throught the discovery of a very strange egg. In the third book, we see the rooster and hen face the challenge of everyday life: Guarding babies and finding food at the same time is no easy feat. The untraditional couple prove to also have untraditional gender roles, so the hen is the one going fishing, with a very unexpected catch! There are many stories to be told and games to be played in the mediation of this triology.

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All three books can be read separately, but the fun more than triples if you read them together. Rodriguez´ storytelling is brilliant, and I love how she uses the long narrow format to make both storyboard-like sequences of many panels and long nature scapes. The choice of color always reflect the mood of the characters, making it easier for the smaller children to do their meaning-making. But the true magic is in the fact that it is a triology, it is so much fun to read them all in one sitting, going back and forth between the books to see how the characters are evolving or using different pages in all books to make up totally new stories.
 

The fox is known from so many fairy tales from cultures all over the world. It is usually described as cunning and maybe even a little evil, a stereotype Rodriguez makes full use of as she turns the tables and makes him the good guy. Never jugdge a book by its cover - or a fox by it´s girlfriend! ​​