The Curious Fox by Ross McDonagh The Curious Fox
by Ross McDonagh, illustrated by Conor M. O’Brien
(Veritas, €8.99 / £6.99)
An Irish journalist exiled to Hollywood, Ross McDonough has written a fable set in a sort of never-land of the fairy tale. His little fox cub lives in a country where he can encounter not only the homely things of the Irish countryside, but tigers, giraffes and crocodiles.
Told in rhymed verse which may strike the adult reader as a little clunky, but which will appeal to the young audience for which it is intended, the book explores curiosity as a virtue itself – a nod here perhaps to Rudyard Kipling, though perhaps no one reads that old Imperialist today and his tales of the great, green, greasy, Limpopo River.
The little fellow packs a great deal of experience into a single day, at the end of which he realises he has learnt a valuable lesson about life.