This book was recommended during a diverse books readers advisory training that I attended at work last year. My library owns it, so I checked it out. What an interesting read!
First, it should be noted that Fox Bunny Funny is a wordless graphic novel. My library shelves it in the adult graphic novel section, but it has definite teen appeal. It takes place in a world inhabited by foxes and bunnies, where the natural order is that foxes eat bunnies.
(But wait, you say: isn't that obvious? Of course foxes eat bunnies!)
What takes this scenario up a level: in this world, foxes and bunnies wear clothes and go shopping and go to school and drive cars. So it feels a bit more malicious than the known prey-predator relationship we're used to.
The story primarily follows one fox of undetermined gender, who appears to be about teenaged. The reader experiences the fox/bunny world through their eyes, and are allowed to form their own opinions about what is happening.
Fox Bunny Funny isn't terribly discreet about it's message: it's very obviously anti-racism/anti-sexism. Anti- some-kind-of-ism. It's hard to tell what the exact "-ism" is since it's played out between foxes and bunnies. Even with a kind of heavy-handed message, it's still a good story, with good pacing.
And now I can say that I've read my first wordless book!
Oh, and the artwork! Clean black-and-white. I liked it. And it very much fit the story line.
*I checked out my copy of Fox Bunny Funny from my local library.
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