The City

Scary Stories for Young Foxes #2

by Christian McKay Heidicker, Junyi Wu (Illustrator)

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.

Genres: Middle Grade, Horror, Fantasy, Fiction, Animals, Adventure, Short Stories

386 pages, Hardcover

First published August 31, 2021

About the author

Christian McKay Heidicker is an American author of children's books. His book Scary Stories for Young Foxes received a Newbery Honor in 2020.

Prior to his career as a novelist, Heidicker held several jobs in the education field. These included creating instructional comic books, writing articles on science and history for students, and teaching creative writing at Broadview University.

Heidicker's first novel, the young adult title Cure for the Common Universe, was published in 2016. Scary Stories for Young Foxes, his first middle grade book, appeared in 2019. It was hailed by Kirkus Reviews as "dark and skillfully distressing." Scary Stories went on to win a Newbery Honor in 2020.

Heidicker lives and works in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Reviews

[karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

SPOOKTOBER IS WINDING DOWN!!



i needed a gentle-spook read after the revulsion-parade of Next Door Lived A Girl.

review to come!!!!

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deliciously creepy, incredibly intense. It was scary enough in the first one to read about young foxes, alone in the woods, fighting off predators, battling for food and territory, but here we find our new group of adventurous kits fighting for their freedom and their lives with the enemy being the worst predator of all: HUMANS.

Ugh, we really are terrible, aren't we?

I loved the way the kits described things they had no words for. And seeing how the stories of the first book had been passed down.

[Guylou (Two Dogs and a Book) · Rating 5 out of 5]

📚 Hello Book Friends! Can I tell you how much I love the Scary Stories for Young Foxes Series by Christian McKay Heidicker? I just finished the second and last book in the series entitled: “SCARY STORIES FOR YOUNG FOXES: THE CITY”. I loved the book and now I am sad that I will no longer have these extraordinary little foxes to guide me through this amazing story. This story will scare you, put you on the edge of your seat, and make you jump up and down while you are cheering for these awesome little foxes. Although this book is marketed for younger readers, any adult should pick up a copy and immerse themselves in this absolutely perfect story. You can’t ask for more, the book has adventures, danger, fear, loss, courage, ingenuity, and let’s not forget, clever foxes. Pick up both books today, you will not regret it.

#bookstadog #poodles #poodlestagram #poodlesofinstagram #furbabies #dogsofinstagram #bookstagram #dogsandbooks #bookishlife #bookishlove #bookstagrammer #books #booklover #bookish #bookaholic #reading #readersofinstagram #instaread #ilovebooks #bookishcanadians #canadianbookstagram #bookreviewer #bookcommunity #bibliophile #scarystoriesforyoungfoxesthecity #christianmckayheidicker #raincoastbooks #henryholtbooks #bookreview

[Sophie · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is fine, I am not crying at all. I'm fine. It's fine. *Breaks down* How did he write a book that is as good as the first book? HOW?

[Josiah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I gather that Christian McKay Heidicker was more than a little surprised when Scary Stories for Young Foxes was awarded a 2020 Newbery Honor, but the book's innovation and wisdom were deserving. Two years afterward came The City; would the followup be as good? Three kit foxes in the Antler Wood—an alpha, beta, and runt—seek refuge from a winter storm when they happen across a badly bleeding fox. The alpha is wary of this Stranger, but he's in no shape to harm the youngsters. In severe pain, he tells them there's an important story that brought him here today. The alpha isn't sure they should indulge the Stranger, but they sit and listen while he spins the yarn from its beginning.

"Stories...didn't happen because you wanted them to. In fact, they seemed to happen when you were least ready for them."

—The City, P. 172

A captive fox is usually joyless, but not on the Farm. A human child named Fern and her father, the Farmer, keep foxes in cages that preserve their furs for...future use. The foxes have no real names, just assigned numbers, but they love exchanging stories of fox adventurers like Mia and Uly. Two kits, O-370 and his pal R-211, talk of breaking out and finding adventure as Mia and Uly did, but O-370 escapes his cage one day and discovers the horrifying truth about the Farm. Gathering courage, he leaves for the world beyond. R-211 hasn’t the gumption to join him, but O-370 can't stay now that he knows the violence awaiting every fox at the Farmer's hands.

"Alphas forge the path for other foxes. They learn from the stories of the past in order to show others the way forward."

—The City, P. 306

Farm living is way different from the city, where three fox kits—Cozy, Julep, and Sterling—subsist under the austere eye of Dusty, a vixen who adopted them as orphans. A fourth kit is added when Cozy and her "siblings" catch a pampered farm fox stealing food. Julep nicknames O-370 "Oleo" and the name sticks, but Oleo has to prove he isn't dead weight. A rash attempt at crossing the busy city streets lands Julep in a horror hospital for animals; Dusty is ready to abandon him, but Oleo won't turn his back on his new "brother". A crazy rescue gambit introduces them to a doctor—"Rubber Hands"—of questionable motive, as well as the doctor's heavily bandaged chimpanzee assistant. The kits call him the Ragged, an animal of brutal speed and strength who carries out Rubber Hands's orders with grim efficiency. Julep will owe Oleo a debt of gratitude if they survive, but the horrors have hardly begun. A disease sweeping the city endangers the kits and Dusty, rendering unlikely Oleo's dream of returning to the Farm and emancipating his friends. The legends of Mia and Uly inspired Oleo at one time, but real life is bleaker. Not everyone he has come to love will survive to the end of his own wildly careening adventure.

"Life isn't a story...If you expect it to be, it will crush you."

—Dusty, P. 216

A major theme of Scary Stories for Young Foxes was how crucial it is to engage with art that frightens or saddens you, and the same is the case in The City. We may wish to avoid pain and view art that is purely entertainment, but superficial art does nothing but anesthetize. This is what the alpha kit struggles with as the Stranger's story takes dark turns; should she expose her siblings to this? She comes to a hard-won resolution within her own stormy thoughts. "(W)hat if the runt and the beta needed these stories? If wild foxes didn't learn about the dangers humans pose, they would be as good as dead...That was what scary stories were for...wasn't it?" Art that causes discomfort can show us how to respond to catastrophe, and teach us to cling to beautiful things while we have them because they don't last forever. The discomfort is evidence that we're growing, and stunting growth because it hurts is no way to live.

"(P)ainful memories could be good things. They helped other foxes avoid danger and kept the brightest parts of the past alive. They helped her remember there was something to fight for."

—The City, P. 367

This book features good characters and one exquisite twist, but starts at a disadvantage. Seventy-two pages longer than Scary Stories for Young Foxes, it feels bloated; by the end I was glad to be done. As a sequel it's unnecessary; the main themes are already in the first book, and presented more winsomely. Nothing about The City merits a four-hundred-page addendum. Still, Christian McKay Heidicker shows flashes of his Newbery brilliance, and Junyi Wu's illustrations are marvelous. I likely rate this book two and a half stars.

[Miriam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really love how these books are written.

[Lizzy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved the first book and was all set to love this book until the vet plot. As a vet, I know we do many things to animals that terrify the hell out of animals, in their best interest. I would've loved a plot line where the vet was just trying to be a good wildlife vet and save the animals, but seemed super spooky doing it. She could've tried to amputate a tail from frostbite or something - something good-hearted, but horrifying from a different perspective. She could have humanely euthanized a neurologic (RABID) fox - plenty of scary horror opportunities there... A lot of the stuff in the vet clinic WAS scary - the anesthetic drugs, the cages full of sick/'cursed' animals....why must it veer into lunacy?

But for some reason the veterinarian is evil. She has a spooky, crappy vet clinic where half the letters are burned out on the sign, she performs medical experiments on stray dogs in her GARAGE, she has a BURN VICTIM CHIMPANZEE FREELY ROAMING HER VET CLINIC RANDOMLY WRAPPING UP PATIENTS???? She has a neurologic, RABID rabbit just hanging out in her clinic? And it escapes and INSTANTLY this leads to packs of rabid dogs? Why is she a plague dogs-esque evil animal scientist but also a normal general practitioner veterinarian? Why is she conducting unethical experiments there - with what free time, I ask you!

And somehow Oleo, who was vaccinated, develops CLINICAL rabies and then gets a vaccine of some "brown liquid" (IDK what brown liquid is supposed to be in this case...) and then magically recovers and survives???? Also she sedates/euthanizes (unclear) a RABID DOG by stabbing it in the throat with some medicine. I don't mind the vet being portrayed as a villain but why must she be an abusive, unethical monster??? All of this was just rife with misinformation about rabies and how vets treat animals. Everything else in the books feels like it could be plausible and is mostly grounded in reality (other than the ghosts, but that part was super cool). Even the stupid spiritualist subplot where a fox crawls around in the walls and scratches as part of the plot was fine.

IDK, I just think this book would have been a lot scarier and more intense if it focused on realistic human-fox interactions. The Hidden Man and the White Barn were scary and intense, without being insane. But the whole middle part of the book just veers into cartoonish villainy that really takes away the scares. If the first book and rest of this book were cartoonish like this, then fine, but why the sudden departure?

[Tamikan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you, NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC!
Super excited the first book is being adapted into an animated mini-series!

Pros:
- creepy middle-grade horror is always a plus
- Lots of twists and turns
- positive messages and vixen power!

Cons:
-might be too gruesome for some readers

O-370 is a fox born on a fox fur farm. He is raised hearing the old stories and wants to have his own adventure. O-370 escapes and makes his way to the city, where he meets a group of foxes and tries to survive. But pretty much anything that could go wrong goes wrong. I didn't like this one as much as the first one, but this is still an entertaining and enjoyable collection of scary stories for young foxes. I really liked how the adventures from the previous book are kept alive, but there are different versions based on the city foxes or farm foxes. I found this one much darker and more gruesome than the first. Be prepared for death, dismemberment, and tragic backstories! Okay, that was in the first one too, but I thought this was more intense. My one complaint is actually with the ARC copy. The illustrations were being weird and would sometimes show up and sometimes not. So I didn't get to enjoy all the illustrations which are a real treat and add to the creepiness of the stories. Highly recommend for middle-grade kids into horror and I hope this series is continued.

[Kirsten · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! WOW! I would give this book ten stars if it were possible. I do not have sufficient words to describe the brilliant storytelling, perfect pacing, and utterly horrifying vibe this book imbues. What a gift. I am awestruck. Imagine a blood-dripping, vicious zombie-filled world; then stir in some cute little fluffy-tailed foxes, and see it all through their eyes. Read this book. Now. Unless scary stories are not your thing. In that case, think twice. This is a follow up to Heidicker's AMAZING Newbery Honor winning novel Scary Stories for Young Foxes. If you're up for it, it's helpful to read that one first, but not required. The "Miss Potter" story will make a whole lot more sense. Tee hee. CREEPY!!!

[Susie Prendergast · Rating 3 out of 5]

Surprisingly dark and stressful. Be sure to read the first one beforehand. I liked it, but I can’t think of who I’d recommend it for—it’s too much for my young students and really real for my older students.

[Joel Pae · Rating 5 out of 5]

Compared to the first book, I think that I enjoyed this one more. The story had a lot of plot twists and false climaxes, which helped me read this book without hesitation. I also liked that the author included character personalities and how they adapt to their environment, such as Oleo becoming adjusted to the wild as a result of the City from a timid personality. The transitions between the storytelling and the narration were natural because the author made the storyteller one of the side characters, which meant that all of the foxes in the story would appear as one set. As I read this book, I liked the descriptive details and the excessive use of onomatopoeia, which made the book look more like a movie script or play and helped me to imagine each detail like a movie scene. A recurring theme in this book is that accepting loss is part of moving on. This is because even though the protagonists, such as Cozy and Julep, come from different families, they all have their losses and stories that they are forced to hide as they adjust to living in the city. Later, when Oleo rescues everyone on the farm, he is also confronted with the death of A-211, which is another part of losing loved ones. This book had many different emotions including happiness, sorrow, anger, etc., and it is an excellent example of weaving in these feelings naturally like strings. I think that this book is worth reading, and I would recommend it to anyone who likes realistic fiction or fantasy.

[Maggie Maxfield · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would give it three and a half stars -- my daughter couldn't wait to rip this one off the library shelves and devour it. She even got her friends to play "foxes" during recess and assigned them characters from the book, closely following the plot as it unfolded day by day. Unfortunately, many of her friends died as the story went on and she didn't know what to do with them at recess. Then she died and was not very happy about her character's story arc. This one was a little trickier to read because I didn't have the back story in my mind like I had for Beatrix Potter in the first "Scary Stories," And tense scenes told from a fox' perspective were harder to follow. But it has a delightful twist at the end and a Tim-Burton-Meets-Newbery-Author narrative style.

[Valerie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fun read for spooky season. Definitely adding this to my collection of scary stories to bring out every year in October.

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this follow up as much as the first one. I laughed, I cried. I read some parts quickly, eager to learn what came next, and others slowly so as to savor. Highly recommend.

[Joseph Brink · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was such a good book. Even better than the first. So scary, so heartwarming, so twisty. I loved everything about this book. =)

[Kayla Zabcia]

DNF; 24%

The author reads narrates the audiobook and does a decent job of it, but it turns out I don't like books about dying foxes :/

[Dusti Falgoust · Rating 4 out of 5]

Soul-crushing, disturbing, a twisted reminder of reality. A masterpiece of middle grade horror!

[Alyson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was thrilled to learn that there would be another Scary Stories book. The first was such a unique and unexpected read. The surprise was missing from this book but it was still clever. This particular book was a bit more gruesome. It definitely made a point that wild animals are meant to be in the wild and do not mix well with humans. I love the layers the author puts into his books.

[Bethe · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars. The creepiness continues, perhaps more so for the tender hearted animal lover good at making inferences, at the beginning of the book. A great story unfolds with the foxes facing urban monsters and terrors. Some twisty parts toward the end with the storytelling under the trees, just like in book one. Be brave and keep reading - the end is worth it.

[Christie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm trying to work out who is the intended audience for these books. It's our second Scary Stories for Young Foxes book and these things are Dark. (Uppercase "D" intended.). The stories are really scary. I'm reading them to my 14-year-old because we still read almost every night before bedtime, even if it's only a few pages. He can handle them okay because, well, he's 14. But he's sort of a scaredy cat, he doesn't like scary movies, either.

In this book, the stories involve a fox skin farm, which is beyond horrifying. These cute little foxes are hanging out in cages thinking life is pretty good until one of them catches a glimpse of what goes on in the white barn.

When Oleo escapes and ends up in the city, his adventures are both funny and scary - but a different, healthier kind of scary*. There are wild foxes and city foxes and farm foxes. And I don't think I'm ruining the story to say that it is their ability to all work together that ends up saving them in the end.

If/when another in the series comes out, we'll read it. This just isn't a book I would even have considered buying when my son was much younger. The stories definitely would have given him nightmares before he was...10.

*healthier - like when he tries to cross a multi-lane roadway. Scary but ... not the skins of cute foxes that have been ripped off the bodies of dead foxes and hung from barn rafters. See the difference?

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5…This sequel has a similar structure to its predecessor, but is basically linear, where the OG was more like interweaving short stories that came together. Pretty good, and terrifying in its own way, if less almost mythological.

[Jenna (Falling Letters) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thanks to Rosemary's review at Mom Read It for bringing the existence of this book to my attention. I really must try to read it before the year is up.

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

New foxes, new setting, new horrors.

[Anna Sobczak · Rating 5 out of 5]

These books are just fun to read, creatively written and engaging, read if you want a spooky thrill and an always expanding saga of interconnected fox stories.

[Jim · Rating 1 out of 5]

This follow up to ’Scary Stories For Young Foxes’ lacked the magic - gory and visceral, but still magic - of that book. I am not against animal protagonists outside their natural habitats, it can be fun to put animals in the human world and craft scenarios for how they would react, but that concept did not work here at all. It started off well enough with some foxes hunting in the wild, but then they come across a wounded fox - named O-370 - and things just went downhill from there. For starters, I understand the reason for naming the foxes this way but it just felt weird and pulled me out of the story. Would foxes keep using this naming convention? Doubtful. Then we are thrust into multiple scenarios that felt too human-focused, or maybe just not things foxes would have any way of understanding or sorting out, being foxes and all. Maybe that was the bigger problem, the foxes were not acting like foxes, but humans. These are dark and ugly happenings, which I don’t necessarily mind being a horror fan, but I felt they edged toward some sort of Hostel (the film) for Foxes, which was a bit disturbing. I didn’t care much about the foxes, as their travels and travails in the human world lacked any nuance, and while death happens in nature, there was a strange human-level aspect to the unseemly happenings that pulled me out of the foxes’ story and turned it into a human-focused narrative, and not an enjoyable one. I know - Scary Stories is the title - but this lacked any semblance of cuteness or magical-fantasy atmosphere for me. There are easy messages to take from this, but they felt tacked on and uninspired, or maybe just the usual run-of-the-mill (dark pun intended…) ones every Children’s and MG book could use, even in a poorly told tale. To circle back, you can take animals out of the forest, but it takes some special skills to keep them “animal enough” in their unnatural setting to craft an intriguing story (or stories) around their thoughts and actions. This set of stories was not a success for me.

[Becky B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alpha, Beta, and Runt are three wild foxes who stumble across a stranger fox who is in bad shape. He tells the three young foxes stories of a fox who is raised on a fur farm, O-370, who escapes to the city, but finds new horrors he must survive there, and always in the back of his mind are the other foxes he left behind.

If you have read the first book in this series, you will recognize the foxes names in the legendary stories the kits talk about, and you also won't be surprised that there turns out to be a connection between the Alpha, Beta, and Runt's story and Oleo's story. It is cleverly done, but since it is kind of expected in this volume it doesn't feel quite as clever as the first book. Who is telling the story to Alpha, Beta, and Runt will likely be the biggest surprise to readers. (Nope, not telling.) Again, like the first book these would be horrifying tales if you were a fox, but to humans they are animal survival stories that help you look at normal occurrences in a fresh way (or historic occurrences as this seems to be set in the early 1900s based on certain clues). It is a great example of voice and perspective for writing. I have a few readers who can't wait for this book to hit the shelves. I was personally slogging through until I switched to listening to the audiobook...the narrator of that does a great job, especially with the sound effects written into the story and the pacing. The only drawback to the audiobook was that the file I got through Scribd was corrupted and it kept repeating chapters 5-10 or a couple others intermittently throughout the book and I'd have to fastforward through those extra repeats. I think there were over 30 repeat chapters mixed in throughout the book! Hopefully, that isn't a common experience. Hand this to cautionary tale fans, animal survival story fans, and those looking for a scary but not really scary read.

Notes on content: No language issues. No sexual content. There's several animal deaths from a variety of circumstances on page or heard about, it's moderately gory.

[Marion Cleborne · Rating 5 out of 5]

The City is the sequel to Scary Stories for Young Foxes, one of my favorite books of all time. It’s a hard act to follow. But, as soon as I finished SSFYF, I needed to pick up the sequel. Not only is this a worthy follow-up, I might even say it’s better than the first.

Mia and Uly’s tales have been passed down by the foxes on the Farm. Kit 0-370 yearns to have adventures like that, but the other foxes are content with the food and heaters and safety of their cages. However, when 0-370 finds out the horrible truth of what really happens in the White Barn, he knows he must escape.

Meanwhile, fox kit Cozy lives in the City with her skulk. Life in the City is nothing like life in the wild, but it’s not any safer. Cars, traps, and, worst of all, humans lurk around every corner. When a strange fox kit with floppy ears shows up, Cozy is thrown into even more turmoil, including having to face the past she tried so hard to bury.

I came in with very high expectations, but also fairly confident The City could not measure up to the original SSFYF. I was wrong. This novel is just as good, not to mention much darker and more gruesome than the original. In fact, I hesitate to recommend it to most middle grade readers because of how scary it is. It thoroughly crept me out in many parts as an adult!

This book contains a significant amount of animal death/abuse in it. Honestly, there were parts I struggled to get through (the rats… If you’ve read it, you know). While the original was more “Nat Geo” scary (to steal a term I’ve heard used to describe it), in this novel, the kits face human threats, such as guns and poison. While terrifying, I couldn’t look away, needing to know how the kits would escape their new threat—or even if they would. Be prepared: no one is safe.

The City is a wonderful follow-up to SSFYF, and a fantastic novel in its own right. It is far scarier and much more intense than the average MG horror, though, so only read it if you know you can handle it… Perhaps not at night.

[Kaitlyn Bancroft · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every bit as darling and impactful as the first book. I adored the cozy spookiness of these tales, from the way Christian McKay Heidicker’s pure poetry flowed through me to how the just-creepy-enough drawings gave the book an unshakable ambience. Just like the previous book, the way our fox protagonists experienced traditional horror tropes — cults, organ harvesting, zombies, speaking with spirits and more — was so fantastically clever and compelling.

The juxtaposition of the foxes’ ignorance of the human world against my own knowledge also made for some incredibly thought-provoking commentary. For instance, the foxes fear of “Veteri” and “Rubber Hands” left me considering how, often, things are scary only because we don’t understand them. I also loved Cozy’s realization that sometimes scary stories are just tragedies that haven’t been addressed yet. It was horrifyingly fascinating to read about how easily the Farm foxes were lulled into complacency and how willingly they chose blindness. And Oleo’s grief and anger upon losing a loved one was so raw and real. These are some difficult, complex ideas for a children’s book, yet Heidicker presents them in a way that readers of any age can connect with and learn from. If that’s not talent, I don’t know what is.

I thought some of the interconnected stories were stronger than others, though they certainly each brought something to the table. The only thing I’m really confused by is that last illustration and the final line of the poem on the inside front flap. “And foxes wake to metal scrapes, their limbs pinned down by bands”… and the drawing shows that… but in the last section of the book, nothing remotely close to the illustration or the last poem stanza happens. Am I missing something? Did I somehow gloss over something stupidly obvious? Please, someone enlighten me. 😅

I can’t recommend these books highly enough. What lovely, delightfully spooky Halloween reads.

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's another human-kind story from Christian McKay Heidicker, yet also, a fox story of gigantic proportions. Could it be that they belong with other myths told to children? This time, Heidicker writes eight connected stories, each introduced by a storyteller who seems to know it all. Well, it was that way until some others had to help end the stories, other young heroes. O-370, a fox kit who yearns for more excitement than a cage that keeps him warm and a farmer that keeps him well fed takes a chance, showing his courage, and when he discovers the true nature of this farm when foxes unite in the White Barn, he does his best to release the others. In another group in the wild, young Cozy travels in certain places with a leader named Dusty, but danger is there, too, as the face of someone who is killing foxes. She and her group flee to the city. They know its dangers there, but it's the only solution now. When they find O-370, they chuckle at the name and think he's really Oleo. Unexperienced, he turns out to be one important part of this group, in the city, then back, back to The Farm.
Each part brings tense moments and wonder at the actions of these foxes, facing danger from a human with a stick, one with rubber hands, and hounds that carry a yellow scent. It's a surprise, often terrifying, other times poignant, on every page. And, as questioned first, one can find a parallel with human lives, too, if you allow it. What a terrific sequel, enhanced by Junyi Wu's spectacular illustrations.

[Amber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scary Stories for Young Foxes: The City is everything a sequel should be—bigger in scope, deeper in heart, and just as thrilling to read aloud as the first book. Christian McKay Heidicker takes the courage and wonder of the original story and drops it into a bustling, intimidating new setting that had my children completely hooked from the first chapter.

Reading this out loud felt like going on an adventure together. The city brings new dangers—louder, darker, more unpredictable—but it also introduces new friendships, moments of surprising tenderness, and brave choices that sparked so many good conversations with my kids. Every chapter ended with them begging, “Just one more!” We finished it in 3 nights.

Heidicker’s storytelling shines in this book. The pacing is quick, the spooky moments land perfectly, and the emotional beats feel honest without ever being too heavy for young listeners.

The fox characters continue to grow in ways kids can really connect to. They learn to navigate a world that doesn’t always feel safe, discovering courage in unfamiliar places and kindness in unexpected allies. Watching them adapt, problem-solve, and stick together created some of our favorite read-aloud moments.

What I loved most is how this story balances adventure with meaning. The city is scary, yes, but it’s also full of light, proof that bravery isn’t the absence of fear, but choosing to move forward even when you’re unsure. My children walked away from each chapter feeling braver themselves.