I read this book around 1996 and it looked kind of old then. It was a hard cover, wide book and I’m pretty sure the picture on the front was yellow/orange. Very autumn like. The story was about a family of foxes, a mother, father, a son and a daughter (they specifically used the word vixen). The little vixen fox went and found an elderly couple who lived in a house and stayed with them. They gave her a red ribbon to wear. Her leg got caught in a hunter’s trap, and her mom came and lay down with her, where I think it snowed on them and they died together. Every year after that a certain kind of flower (might have been red) would grow in the shape of their bodies laying together.
Stump the Bookseller
New format, same book stumper solving.
This sounds like ‘The Foxes of Chironupp Island’ by Hiroyuki Takahashi (1976). The book was also made into an animated film called “Chironuppu no Kitsuni” (The Foxes of Chironupp) in 1987. The following is from a review of the film that was based on the book:
“Set during W.W. II, Chironuppu no Kitsuni tells the story of a pair of foxes with a litter of two pups. One of the playful baby foxes gets estranged from its parents. An old couple praying in front of an old Jizo statue near their hut discover the little guy, and take him in out of pity. They tie a red bow with a bell around its neck to keep track of him. After a storm destroys the couple’s home, the little fox gets reunited with its family. But soon, the outside world intrudes. Japanese soldiers in search of fox pelts land on the island. They shoot and kill the father fox and one of the babies. The baby fox with the bell gets caught in a trap. The mother fox stays by its side trying to free it, to no avail. The next spring, the old couple are wandering through the forest when, in a flower patch, they run across a trap. Next to the trap is all that’s left of the little fox – a red collar with a bell.
The story was inspired by an event in the life of the author of the novel on which the film is based. The author, Hiroyuki Takahashi, visited the island of Urup in the spring of 1944. He ran across traps in the woods set by poachers. One of these had the tiny skeleton of a baby fox in its clutches. This novel was his way of voicing his anger at the practice of trapping.”
yes, i’m pretty sure thats it! i googled the name and it came up with this picture which i remember being from it
http://www.abload.de/img/cover1ll8a.jpg
I cannot believe there is another person on this planet that has been haunted by this book like I have. I read this book when I was 10 years old in 1984 and it has stuck with me ever since. As I grew older I lost the title and the author’s name, but the story of the red ribbon around the fox cub;s neck and the hunter;s trap and the mother and fox cub dying in the snow, only for white flowers to grow in their shape the next year, except for the one red flower around what would have been the little fox’s neck, this story has stuck with me for all those years since I was a child to now a 43 year old woman. I have scoured the internet with keywords and even emailed a book finding website. Just now I decided to give it another go and I find this!!! You have just made an Australian woman very very happy!!!