Robbyn Smith van Frankenhuyzen

Author-illustrator team (and married couple) Robbyn Smith van Frankenhuyzen and Gijsbert van Frankenhuyzen return to the world of Hazel Ridge, their forty-acre farm and wildlife center in rural Michigan, with this second work of picture-book natural history, having first introduced readers to their wildlife rehabilitation activities in their debut collaborative venture, Adopted by an Owl. Here they present the story of Samantha, an injured young fox pup, rescued from a steel-leg trap one morning by Robbyn, nursed back to health in the midst of the bustling van Frankenhuyzen household, and then released back into the wild.

As a fox lover, and a reader with a decided predilection for touching animal tales, I was quite excited to read Saving Samantha, even going so far as to convince my local public library to order a copy, as none of the libraries in our county system had it in their collections. In the end, however, I think that I preferred the artwork to the text, which I found somewhat disjointed - perhaps as a result of being based on Robbyn Smith van Frankenhuyzen's journal, kept while she was raising Samantha? - and not as emotionally resonant as I had expected it to be. I don't want to overstate the case, since this was still a moderately enjoyable (and informative) book, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to young animal lovers and fox fans, but I think Cherie Mason's Wild Fox: A True Story, which contains a similar tale of a woman nursing a wild fox back to health, is a superior work.… (more)