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There has been much discussion recently on the question of whether human beings have free will, or whether all our reactions are predetermined by our genetic make-up and certain automatic reactions in the brain. The question has seldom been given such a persuasive and convincing answer as in this really unusual picture-book for children aged four and upwards.
The story itself is quickly told. A hungry fox called Conrad catches not a duck but her egg, and soon afterwards a chick hatches from it. The first thing the duckling sees is the fox, so he takes Conrad for his father. Suddenly the fox finds that he can’t eat the appealing little duckling, and instead he looks after his “adopted child” with touching concern, giving him the name of Lawrence. Lawrence grows up to be a handsome drake and falls in love with a duck called Emma, who moves in with Conrad and Lawrence and soon lays five eggs. But Emma and Lawrence don’t know how to make chicks come out of the eggs. Once again it is Conrad, going against his foxy nature, who tells the ducks how to brood on a clutch of eggs until they hatch out. The ducklings hatch, the duck family grows and grows, populating the whole forest, and although Conrad is hungry all the time, he is happy with his “grandchildren”. Finally his life comes to its end, and he dies a contented old fox.
This book can be understood as a fable about the power of love, here overcoming even extreme pangs of hunger. Author and artist bring off the difficult trick of handling such a subject in a picture-book without emotionalism or sentimentality. The text by Christian Duda and the illustrations by Julia Friese complement each other very harmoniously, each contributing to the progress of the story.
A few strongly contrasting colours dominate the illustrations; the background often consists of collages in tones of brown, torn from pieces of wrapping paper. The fox and the ducks are the coloured elements in the pictures; their expressive faces are not “cute”, but complex and enigmatic. Guidelines showing through can either indicate movement or point to other options in the story that are open to the character shown. For instance, the fox’s face repeatedly shows both Conrad’s kind, friendly expression and the ferocious grimace of the beast of prey in him – a part of his nature that, however, he manages to suppress. The illustrations in this book employ an impressive variety of artistic methods.
Christian Duda’s text also uses some stylistic methods that go down particularly well with children: repetition, for instance, which he keeps using to build the suspense up again, although we adults soon guess that the story is bound to have a happy ending. Knowing that his reactions are entirely unworthy of a beast of prey, the fox tries to justify them to himself by repeatedly postponing his plans to eat the ducks. “I know what!” he cries. The skinny little duckling must grow fatter before Conrad eats him, because as yet there’s no meat on him. Then he hopes that Lawrence and Emma will soon fall out of love, so that he can eat Emma and any other girlfriends whom Lawrence discards. When nothing comes of that plan either, he looks forward to the eggs and the ducklings who will hatch out of them, because then he could always … But in the end love always conquers, and by the third episode at the latest even younger readers will be able to foresee the outcome!
Heike Friesel
February 2008
[Translated by Anthea Bell]
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