Foxy and Egg by Alex T Smith

Have you discovered Alex T Smith?  His books are fabulous!  You may already know how much I love the Claude series and I recently talked about Little Red and the Very Hungry Lion.  Now we have Foxy and Egg.  Adults may predict the ending but I guarantee little children will not - they will squeal with delight when Egg finally hatches - as all eggs must.

Begin with the first page.  We see a group of show girl hens with their tiny chicks and one little egg with slight cracks but not yet hatched. As the story opens  Egg rolls up to the home of Foxy DuBois - he "was utterly charming and always kind to strangers".  He invites her in for a BITE to eat. His home is filled with paintings of chickens and eggs.  The pair sit down to a feast of cakes, sandwiches and donuts.  "Egg wobbled with excitement."

Foxy suggests they play some games such as an egg and spoon race. "At the end of the night, Egg was in a complete spin!".  She settles down for the night in a cosy bed. Foxy's dreams are filled with egg recipes of every description but when he checks on Egg in the morning he is in for a HUGE surprise.

Foxy, himself, first appeared in a set of easy chapter books which we do have in our library.

We actually have so many books in our school library about foxes (and chickens).  You could easily spend a whole term reading them.  It would be fun to make a list of all the cunning ways foxes try to lure little chickens and all the ingenious ways chickens are able to avoid this fate. You could start with this collection from my friend at Kinderbooks.