"That's it, I'm running away," says Zelda to her little sister Ivy upon learning that Dad is making cucumber sandwiches for lunch yet again. Off to the back yard march the orange and red bushy-tailed fox sisters, setting up their blanket behind the butterfly bush and playing 14 hands of Go Fish while waiting in vain for their parents to notice they're missing. In the other two chapters of this amiable easy reader, fourth in the series and winner of the 2006 Geisel Award, the sisters bury a time capsule of their treasures and then dig it up, and they concoct a secret formula, a drink Ivy calls "creative juice.”

Make cucumber sandwiches together and see if your fussy eaters agree with Zelda. It would be fun, too, at the start of the year, to assemble a time capsule box, packed with your children's photos, drawings and writings. Bury it (in a closet somewhere), and unpack it at the end of the year to gauge how they’ve grown. Using fruit juice, concoct your own creative juice to drink before drawing a picture or writing a poem, and see if it works. Zelda and Ivy are foxes, but they act very much like human kids. Ask your human kids what kinds of animals they see themselves being and have them draw portraits of themselves as those creatures.



THEMES: FOXES. FAMILY LIFE. GEISEL MEDAL. RUNAWAYS. SISTERS.