Text-to-World Connection--Fox by Margaret Wild and Ron Brooks

In the picture book Fox by Margaret Wild and Ron Brooks, one antagonist, Fox, shows a text-to-world connection. The book is about a half-blind Dog and his friend, a bird named Magpie. In the exposition, one of Magpie's wings is severely injured and she can't fly anymore. Dog, being a good friend, allows Magpie to sit on his bag while he runs and enjoys the same sort of rush as flying gives her. In the climax, though, Magpie goes to Fox, a faster runner, instead of staying with her loyal friend. To me, this seemed like a poor and selfish move on Magpie's part, especially since Dog was doing the best he could with what he had. The conflict of the book is the way Dog and Magpie's friendship could now lose strength, and the problems for both protagonists.

The text-to-world connections I noticed were in cases of bullying. After Fox takes Magpie, he drops her in a desert and abandons her, and tells her she now knows what it feels like to "be alone." I related this to bullying because, as seen, she is receiving abuse, and it is delivered in a way that a lot of people in the real world also bully others. A lot of people who bully bully because they are insecure about their own problems, and take it out on others. Fox was alone when Magpie and Dog were friends, and then wanted Magpie (although she did nothing wrong) to feel what it was like to be alone. I've heard about people bullying homosexuals because they themselves are homosexual and feel bad about themselves for it. That's one of the ways people react to their own problems, is to make others feel bad about the same problem they may have. After thinking about this, I realized that this may be because nobody wants to be in their own boat, and doesn't want to be alone, especially when they could be judged or harshly bullied. This makes sense to me, because Fox didn't want to be the only one who was alone: he wanted Magpie and Dog to feel how he was feeling, which was sad, lonely, and jealous of them. This was a huge connection from the actual text to the world, and shows that even picture books aimed for kids can show huge resemblances to middle and high school life, and just the world and way of living in general.

This story really showed me and probably showed elementary school kids that being a bully like Fox was really isn't a great way to win someone's heart or make friends. This reminded me of "Am I Blue?" by Bruce Coville, the short story we read at the beginning of the year, because the boy bullying Vincent about his sexuality was homosexual too. This seems like a pattern, and I realized that if you don't want to be alone about a specific problem, insecurity, or issue you're undergoing, then instead of making someone else feel bad about it, you could try and make them feel better about it. That may even make you feel better about it, too.