The Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night

This song has been a big hit in our household over the past month. To refresh your memory, here's the first verse:

The fox went out on a chilly night
He prayed for the moon to give him light
For he'd many a mile to go that night
Before he reached the town-o, town-o, town-o
He'd many a mile to go that night before he reached the town-o

We have a CD with Pete Seeger's version of the song, which I love, and an LP of Burl Ives, which isn't as good. We like to sing it ourselves, too, and we've sung it often enough that we've reached the point of improvisation. Today as we were shoveling some cedar bark mulch into a wheelbarrow, Isaac was singing, "For he'd many a mile to go that night, before he reached the mulch-o, mulch-o, mulch-o!"

I thought it would be interesting to get a book of the song, so I checked out the version illustrated by Peter Spier. Isaac absolutely loves it, and we've read it to him about ten times in the 24 hours since I brought it home from the library. It won a Caldecott Honor in 1962, and the illustrations, which depict an autumnal New England in the late 1800s, are fabulous. There's a lot of detail in each picture, and Isaac likes looking closely at them -- although he said "Don't know what that is" about several antique farm implements, and I wasn't always sure either. I had to try to explain, for example, what a whetstone is.

The book's illustrations also contain teachable moments that go beyond farming equipment. One instance is the fox's very purpose for going out on the town. Isaac doesn't seem fazed by the illustrations of terrified and weeping poultry being carried off by the fox -- like the fox himself, Isaac doesn't "mind the quack quack quack / or the legs all dangling down-o." He's too young to sympathize with the birds, I guess, although I feel a twinge of pity myself, even though the subject is illustrated with an impressive comic lightness.

However, I found myself strangely at a loss when Isaac asked me what a gun was.

There are two guns, the first Isaac has ever seen. One, brandished by the farmer trying to prevent the fox from stealing his livestock, is relatively easy to explain. The other, in the hands of a statue of a soldier memorializing Civil War dead, is much trickier. "A gun is a machine to kill things," I said. "But really the farmer just wants to scare the fox away." But how can I explain the reasons the statue of the soldier is holding a gun? How much does Isaac need to know about why people use guns on other people? How much does he need to know about the war and death the statue signifies? (There's also a Civil War cannon next to the statue -- is two years old too young to discuss weapons of mass destruction?)

I am tongue-tied because I am conflicted. On one hand, I don't want to talk about it at all, because I want to protect Isaac from knowing about evil for as long as possible. On the other hand, I want to talk a lot about it, because I want to teach Isaac that killing and war are evil. I know he's not asking for a lecture on pacifism -- right now he just wants to know what a gun is -- but I need to offer a moral lesson along with the factual explanation. It's an important topic, and one on which he deserves parental guidance. I just don't know how to do it without telling him too much.

To move on to a lighter subject, the Spier book came packaged with a CD of Tom Chapin both reading the story and singing the song. Chapin's style is too exaggerated for my taste, but the most remarkable thing about the CD is this: last night I left it playing after I put Isaac into bed, and he fell asleep while listening to it! (That was the first time I'd tried playing music as Isaac fell asleep. The same trick did not, however, work tonight.)

Finally, tonight Craig asked Isaac if he knew what chilly meant. After they discussed temperature for a while, Isaac said, "Chili is something to eat. With cheese!" Indeed, we did have chili for lunch today. With cheese.
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