Rosie Has a Great Walk....The Fox is Not So Lucky!

Rosie’s Walk is a great book for toddlers and preschoolers. It was written and illustrated by Pat Hutchins. It was published in 1968. I picked up this book for my daughter when she was younger and have since also read it with my son. Both of the children have really enjoyed the story and the humor in it.

The Story
This is the story about Rosie, who is a hen. Rosie decides to go for a walk and it really is just an ordinary walk. She goes:

”across the yard
around the pond
over the hill
past the mill
through the fence
under the beehives”

And, that is the extent of the text except to say that Rosie makes it home in time for dinner!

However, the illustrations tell a whole other story! A fox trails Rosie on her walk. The fox is obviously trying to catch Rosie so he can have her for dinner but that is not to be! The poor fox runs into a lot of misfortune along the way. He is hit in the face by a rake that swings up to hit him, he falls into the pond, sinks into the haystack, gets covered by flour, and lands on a wagon that rolls into the beehives and has bees chasing him way away from there! You just have to feel a little sorry for the fox! But only a little. Meanwhile, Rosie, the hen, doesn’t even know he is following her at all!

Text and Illustrations
As I mentioned already, the text is very short and simply describes where Rosie walks. It uses good prepositions and helps children understand things like “over,” “under,” and “around.” But, that is about all for the text. It is about 3 words every other page!

Amazingly enough, though, the illustrations tell so much of the story. We see all the trouble the poor fox gets into and that is the fun part of this book! Finding the fox on each page isn’t too hard and it is fun for young kids to predict what trouble the fox will get into next!

The illustrations are done in somewhat muted colors. There are a lot of browns and yellows. This seems to work for the farm yard setting though. The pictures are the best part of this story.

My Thoughts
I think this is a very funny book. My 2 year old son seems to like it too. At first, he didn’t seem to get that the fox was chasing the hen but as I pointed out the trouble the fox was getting into, he started to giggle. He especially giggled when he saw the fox falling into the pond. He also really liked the bees chasing the fox! That fox sure wasn’t too smart!

I like that the words in the book are short and that we can read this book together with a minimal amount of actual reading. We do like to talk about the pictures and ad lib parts of the story, like predicting what will happen and discussing what has happened. I keep pointing out to my son that the hen still doesn’t even know that the fox is there!

Recommendations
I will highly recommend this book. It is so funny for adults and for little kids. I think that this book is most appropriate for 2 to 4 year old children. I think older children may think it is funny but will feel too big for this book. Still, it is funny even to me so others may feel the same way. I really like this little book!

Happy Reading!!