When Slim, the hired man who spends his spring and summer months working on the Pennsylvania farm owned by eight-year-old Benjy's father, must head south for the winter, he entrusts his tame fox Goldie to the young Amish boy. Delighted at this opportunity to care for an animal he has come to love, Benjy is diligent in performing his new duties. But despite his careful attention, Goldie escapes one winter night, and is not seen for some time. When she returns, she has a surprise for Benjy, and eventually, for Slim...

Published in 1968, The Little Fox is a brief sixty-page tale, one that, despite the title, is more focused on the rhythms of Amish life than on the relationship between Benjy and Goldie. Apparently Edith Brecht set all of her children's books in the same area of Pennsylvania, choosing to depict the Amish in most of them. Given the name of the protagonist here, I assume that this is a sequel of sorts to her earlier Benjy's Luck, published in 1967. Whatever the case may be, although interesting in some respects - I haven't read a great deal about the Amish, and found some of the customs depicted fascinating - the actual story here is quite weak. Brecht fails to involve the reader in Benjy's tale, and one never really feels his anguish, at the disappearance of Goldie. I tracked this down because it features a fox - the depiction of foxes in children's books being an interest of mine - but in the end, I found that the foxy content was minimal, and that Goldie might just as easily have been another kind of wild animal, for all the difference it makes to the story. In the end, I found Joan Sandin's illustrations, done in some sort of block print, to be the most enjoyable aspect of The Little Fox, and probably won't bother to track down any other titles by this author. ( )