Fox 8: A Story

Cute short story that takes an outside perspective on human activity, which is really interesting. A fox learns English by listening to bedtime stories, and writes this. The fox's perspective is a great way to step outside the box for a moment and try to look at what we do on a day to day basis objectively. Price is right too. Check it out. Now for a stupid moot complaint which didn't really bother me, but I just noticed and have to say it somewhere so i'm saying it here. The "broken" English that the fox learns is funny and cute. He learns the English phonetically by listening to bedtime stories. Unfortunately for me, an ESL teacher, I know all to well the intricacies of the 'interlanguage' on the spectrum of learning English as a second language. The author uses cute phonetic spellings of different phrases and words like "woslike" but keeps certain English spelling conventions and uses complex grammar constructions that don't occur regularly in spoken English. I'm assuming he does this to make it readable, but entertaining. But for me, it took a little away from my suspension of disbelief that the fox was writing and not a white due with something to say.

Deer Fox 8, I hav no werds to describ how sorry I am that you met the crulest yumans. I do not no why we hurt other yumans either, wen we shuld be lifting eechother up, like foxes do. I hope you are able to find hapyness with your new family. I no nothing can bring fox 7 bak, but he is in a hapy place now with other fox in a grate forest wher fud never runs out and no yumans to desturb the peece. Pleese keep on dreeming, it is a grate gift.

At first I was thrown off by the voice, but after a page or two it became tray easy to read ;) The story reminds me a bit of Animal Farm with a question of human morality that invokes my memory of Dostoevsky's The Double. I highly recommend this short story. The bright side- if you hate it, you aren't out a lot of time or money. It's a win!