Silly Fox “Trix” are for Guinea Pigs

                                                             
                                                             Love and Roast Chicken 
                                                              By Barbara Knutson

Have you ever believed something someone told you that wasn’t true? I know I have and have later embarrassed myself, because I believed the person who told me. This is what this book is all about. The fox always believes the little guinea pig time after time even though the guinea Pig leads him to danger. Tio Antionio, the fox, is always trying to eat the Guinea Pig, Cuy. Cuy always finds a way to escape the fox by having Tio Antionio do stuff that could hurt him or get him killed.

My favorite part of the book is when Guinea Pig goes to work on the farmer’s field picking alfalfa. One night Guinea Pig sneaks out and is going to help himself to the farmer’s alfalfa, but he realizes someone has already beat him to the field. Guinea Pig goes up and starts talking to the person in the field and shakes his hand. Guinea Pig’s hand gets stuck and the person won’t let him go so he tries to break away and just keeps getting stuck. Guinea Pig starts yelling and it wakes the farmer up and the farmer realizes that his help he hired is just a Guinea Pig and that’s who has been eating all his alfalfa. The farmer is happy that he caught the person eating his alfalfa and so he ties the Guinea Pig to a tree so the farmer’s family can have roasted guinea pig tomorrow. Along comes the fox and the fox wants to eat the Guinea Pig, but Guinea Pig tells the Fox that he is tied up, because he is going to marry the farmer’s daughter who likes to eat roast chicken. The Guinea Pig says this is a problem because he is a vegetarian and doesn’t eat chicken. So the fox says he will help the Guinea Pig and he does by untying him and then the Guinea Pig ties the fox up. The fox wants to marry the farmer’s daughter, because he loves to eat roasted chicken. When the farmer comes out the next morning and sees that the Guinea Pig is gone he is very confused and then the fox tells his the story that the Guinea Pig had told him and the farmer laughs and laughs and tells fox “You believed a story like that? How foolish!” The fox got away and the fox and the guinea pig never saw each other again. I told you that the fox was foolish for listening to the guinea pig.

This story is a traditional literature, because it has a very vague setting. It starts off by saying “One day in the high Andes Mountains” (Knutson). The story also has the motif of a trickery story where the Guinea Pig outsmarts the fox. The overall theme of the story is to not always believe what someone says, and to make your own decisions. I loved this book and children would love to read the book. I think it would be a good book to read to children in 2nd through 5^th grade. The students would enjoy all of the clever ways the Guinea Pig outsmarts the fox.