• The Big Bad Fox
• written and illustrated by Benjamin Renner
• published by First Second Books (2017)

I don’t know why I let this one sit for so long. The Big Bad Fox came out last year and is just a pure delight, from beginning to end. Created by Benjamin Renner, the story follows a runty little fox who’s so bad at hunting that he’s reduced to scavenging for turnips since he can’t even intimidate the farm chickens.

He continually gets beat up and tossed out of the farmyard until the local tough-guy wolf tricks him into stealing some eggs, which they then plan to hatch and eat. But not everything goes according to plan. The chicks hatch and promptly assume the fox is their mother and they’re young foxes.

The book is at turns hilarious and heartwarming, and it’s honestly one of the most spot-on (and charming) looks at parenting in recent memory.

Benjamin Renner is a French illustrator and animator who is perhaps best known as the Academy Award-nominated director of 2012’s Ernest & Celestine. And if you’ve never seen that lovely film, please go correct your error right now.

It’s no surprise that the animator behind Ernest & Celestine would make a graphic novel that just screams to be animated. Which is precisely what happened. The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales was released in France last year (2017). Sadly, as far as I know, the film hasn’t seen a wide release in the States yet. But we can only hope that GKIDS gets distribution rights and adds it to their amazing catalog.

It’s a loss we don’t have the film yet, but Renner’s watercolors in this book are more than enough to make up for our loss. His simple character designs are remarkable in that they evoke so much emotion, and I defy you not to fall in love with the fox and his three chicks.

(Disclosure: First Second Books provided a review copy of this book. All opinions remain my own.)