WINTER FOX

Rosemary treasures the rabbit she named ``Annabelle...the most beautiful name I had ever heard.'' When Annabelle disappears from her outdoor hutch, Papa takes his gun to hunt a fox that also threatens the hens; but when Rosemary sees it—``winter- thin, butterscotch-pale. Its coat...ragged, its body lean and hungry'' in the moonlight, she shouts ``No!'' before he can shoot. Though she knows the fox took Annabelle, he's not as ``big as a tiger'' and ``strong as a bear,'' as she'd imagined, but needy and vulnerable. It would be interesting to compare this honest, beautifully cadenced book—and its luminous, sensitive, roughly rendered art—with Red Fox Running (Clarion, 1993, received too late for review), where Wendell Minor's exquisitely detailed depiction of the fox belies Eve Bunting's description of a hunter struggling to survive and capturing scrupulously anonymous prey. (Picture book. 4-8)