Scary Stories for Young Foxes: The City

by Christian McKay Heidicker

Overview

From Christian McKay Heidicker, author of the Thieves of Weirdwood trilogy, comes the heart-stopping companion to the 2020 Newbery Honor recipient Scary Stories for Young Foxes, chronicling the adventures of three fox kits desperate to survive the terrors of a frightening new world.

Fox kit O-370 hungers for a life of adventure, like those lived long ago by Mia and Uly. But on the Farm, foxes know only the safety of their wire dens and the promise of eternal happiness in the White Barn. Or so they’re told. When O-370 gets free of his cage, he witnesses the gruesome reality awaiting all the Farm’s foxes and narrowly escapes with his life.

In a nearby suburb, young Cozy and her skulk are facing an unknown danger, one that hunts foxes. Forced to flee their den, they travel to a terrifying new world: the City. That’s where they encounter O-370, and where they’ll need to fight for their lives against mad hounds, killer robots, and the most dangerous of all creatures: humans.

Award-winning author Christian McKay Heidicker once again surprises, delights, and terrifies with eight interconnected stories inspired by classic and modern horror tropes and paired with haunting illustrations from Junyi Wu.

Prepare to be scared.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781432890841
Publisher:	Thorndike Striving Reader
Publication date:	12/29/2021
Series:	Scary Stories for Young Foxes , #2
Edition description:	Large Print
Pages:	523
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Christian McKay Heidicker reads and writes and drinks tea. He is the author of the Newbery Honor-recipient Scary Stories for Young Foxes, as well as Scary Stories for Young Foxes: The City, Cure for the Common Universe and Attack of the 50 Foot Wallflower. With William Shivering, he wrote the Thieves of Weirdwood trilogy. He lives in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Editorial Reviews

"A worthy follow-up, with a triumphant end... Heidicker’s writing continues to shine." —Kirkus Reviews

"A frightfully accomplished companion novel that stands on its own." —Booklist

Praise for Scary Stories for Young Foxes:

A 2020 Newbery Honor Recipient
A Booklist 2019 Editors' Choice Selection
A Texas Bluebonnet Award Master List Selection

“Clever and harrowing.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Into the finest tradition of storytelling steps Christian McKay Heidicker with these highly original, bone-chilling, and ultimately heart-warming stories. All that’s needed is a blazing campfire and a delicious plate of peaches and centipedes.” —Kathi Appelt, Newbery Award honoree and National Book Award finalist

“These tales are not for the faint of heart. And once you start, you cannot stop until you’ve reached the end...Terrifying and wonderful. A nightmare book you’ll want to return to repeatedly.”—Betsy Bird, Fuse8 Productions

“A weird, creepy and thoroughly entertaining romp for readers of all ages! Highly recommended!”—Jonathan Maberry, New York Times-bestselling author of Rot & Ruin and Mars One

“Heidicker has written the next Watership Down.”—New York Times-bestselling author Jessica Day George

“Gather around this collection of finely written stories that will raise your hackles and tingle your whiskers. But reader, beware. The dangers within this book are very real. Fortunately, so is the bravery of foxes.”—Matthew Kirby, Edgar Award-winning author of Icefall and The Clockwork Three

“[F]or a certain type of reader—those lost in a battered copy of Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark—this is exactly the kind of book they’re hunting for… [A] chilling roller coaster of a read.”—Booklist, Starred Review

“Dark and skillfully distressing, this is a story for the bold.”—Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

08/01/2021

Gr 4 Up—Heidicker, a Newbery Honor recipient, continues his tale-within-a-tale of curious foxes listening to a horrific, cautionary account of survival told by a mysterious storyteller. Heidicker mixes characters from the first book—Mia and Uly, Mr. Scratch, Golgathursh, Miss Vix, curse of yellow stench—with newcomers such as Fern, the farmer, Cakeface and Treacle, 0–370 and R(A)-211 in new stories about inquisitive foxes longing for adventure. The foxes will discover if the city truly is a paradox of paradise and death worth giving up two meals a day. Eerie pencil sketch illustrations combined with a hauntingly antiquated way of speaking (and some modern slang) allows readers to empathize and visualize the world through the foxes' perspective. The foxes struggle to explain or piece together universal truths, but aim to protect themselves and help others along the way. This unique title intends to inspire thought about the consequences of human actions on animals and the environment, and paints humans in a negative light that is more terrifying than the first installment. While all humans are not evil, who to trust is a theme throughout. Readers are inspired to research treatment of rabies in foxes and Heidicker's work could be used as a teaching tool about the importance of vaccinations. While the foxes' story has closure in The City, Heidicker paves the way for more stories to come. VERDICT Haunting and frightening nature tales of foxes in the wild and in a city, perfect for fans of Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr. Fox or Sara Pennypacker's Pax; would be a wonderful text for practicing inference skills.—Laura Dooley-Taylor, Lake Zurich M.S. North, IL

School Library Journal

2021-06-16
New foxes experience new horrors.

The travails of Mia and Uly in Heidicker’s Newbery Honor novel, Scary Stories for Young Foxes (2019), have become cautionary, inspirational folklore for a new vulpine generation. Three young foxes come across an injured cousin, who spins them tales of fresh horror. Readers don’t have to be familiar with the first volume to catch the thread of this sequel, and while there are some carry-over references (the yellow stench of rabies, a propagandized version of Beatrix Potter’s appearance), the terrors here are new and mostly a product of civilization. Oleo, né O-370, is a fox with all the wildness bred out of him, and he and his family live in the relative safety of wire cages, heated by lamps, until they are turned into fox-fur coats. When Oleo escapes, he meets a family of orphaned, urban foxes whom he enlists in a quest to save his captured kin. Heidicker’s writing continues to shine, his poetic language depicting scenarios that will be too much for sensitive readers but will more than satisfy those with a taste for gore and tragedy. At times the action becomes more burden than forward momentum, but on the whole, this is a worthy follow-up, with a triumphant end attempting to answer the eternal quandary of safety versus freedom. Final art not seen.

A fur-raising adventure. (Fiction. 9-14)

Kirkus Reviews