Small Readers: A pig, a fox, and a fox by Jonathan Fenske

 Although they are award-winning, Fenske's Fox easy readers are generally not my favorites. They're just a little too mean-spirited for my taste, although the kids find them hilarious. I prefer the squirrels and Crabby. However, I was still excited to see a new book in the series.

I actually rather liked this one more than some of the others. Fox has got a stuffed fox toy and sets out to trick pig in three chapters and some bouncy rhymes. Unfortunately, Fox's tricks always backfire, with painful results. Finally, with Fox sporting a black eye, bruises, scratches, and a bandage, he decides he has had enough fun for one day and to put his stuffed fox friend away, back in the box!

Fans of the series characters will recognize the sneaky but eventually regretful fox and the guileless pig, who helpfully goes along with all the "fun" with their good "friend" fox, with disastrous results - for Fox!

The one thing that I really do not like about this book is that the publisher has completely changed the layout and binding. The simple panels and speech bubbles (Fox has bubbles, Pig has squares) are squeezed from an easy reader format, 9x6 inches with an option for hardcover, library-bound, and paperback, down to 7x5 inches with only a paperback and a paper-over-board hardcover. They appear to have moved the series from Penguin Young Readers to Penguin Workshop and are rebranding it as an easy-to-read book to "build a bridge between beginning and confident young readers" rather than a traditional easy reader. However, it's basically the same reading level as the previous books (if you use lexiles, it's about 20 points higher). If this is meant to be a new series, a la Scholastic's Acorn and Branches books, the publisher did a very poor job and I highly doubt that they will see anything close to the success of those lines. Hopefully Scholastic will purchase the rest of the rights to Fenske's work and put them into their own, reader-friendly format.

Verdict: I really hate this binding. I hate that the text and art is squished down into a tinier format, making it difficult to read. I hate that it's a cheap binding and won't hold up to the many, many circs I expect to get out of my easy readers. I hate that it will not match the rest of the series - or any other easy readers. In short, while the story itself is fine and I actually like it better than previous books with these characters, I am really unhappy with what the publisher has done with the format and as far as I'm concerned this is now a novelty item I wouldn't add to a library collection.

ISBN: 9780593382561; Published September 2020 by Penguin Workshop; Review copy provided by the publisher; Donated to library prize books