Trix and Vix

by Mary Buff, Conrad Buff

The story of a lonely fox named Trix who ventures out on his own, encounters civilization and finds a companion named Vix in the woods.

Genres: Picture Books

37 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1960

About the author

Mary Buff, formerly known as Mary Marsh, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on April 10, 1890. Mary had an early interest in arts and poetry but only continued to study art. She studied at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and at the Cincinnati Art Academy and received her bachelor's degree in Kansas at Bethany College. Mary then lived in Albion, Idaho and in the 1920s settled in Los Angeles. In 1922 she married Conrad Buff. Mary was the assistant curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Her income was large enough to allow her husband, Conrad Buff, to paint full-time. After marrying Conrad Buff, Mary gave up her pursuit of painting to write children`s books with him. She died in 1970.

Reviews

[Abigail · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mary and Conrad Buff, the husaband-and-wife children's book team who produced Caldecott Honor-winning Dash and Dart (1942) and the Newbery Honor-winning Big Tree (1946), The Apple and the Arrow (1951) and Magic Maize (1953), turn to their favorite subject - the natural world - in this story about a gray fox named Trix. The narrative follows Trix from his birth, through his time as a pup, and into adulthood. When time and growth separates him from his family, his curiosity leads him down into the city, where he finds the House of Good Smells, and a human family who feed him. Frightened away by a police dog, Trix returns to the mountains, where he meets Vix, a young vixen who becomes his mate. Eventually, driven by the hunger of winter, they return to the city, where the human children, Jane and David, are delighted to see them again...

The Buffs produced fourteen children's books, from 1937 through 1968, but Trix and Vix is only the second I have read, following upon their Dash and Dart . Published in 1960, toward the end of their career, it is (like many of their others) a work of naturalistic fiction. Text heavy, for a picture-book, it imagines the human world from a fox's perspective, but does not anthropomorphize its vulpine subject. There is sympathy here, for the creatures of the wild, and a sense that people should behave humanely toward animal-kind. At one point, when the children are upset at a picture in the newspaper of a boy holding up a fox he had shot with a bow and arrow, their father observes that "some men and boys just love to kill anything living." The accompanying artwork here is as naturalistic as the text, and looks to be done in pencil. It has plenty of the detailed hatching for which Conrad Buff was apparently known. Although I enjoyed the illustrations, I did find the animals more skillfully done than the people, whose faces seemed a little off to me. Leaving that aside, this was an enjoyable book, one I would recommend to young readers who enjoy more naturalistic animal fiction, as well as to those interested in the Buffs and their work.