Cunning Little Vixen

[SENDAK, Maurice]. The Cunning Little Vixen. By Rudolph Tesnohlikek. Pictures by Maurice Sendak. NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux [1985]. 8vo, 187pp. Green textured cloth stamped in silver on spine, with full-color pictorial paper label affixed to the front cover. Full-color pictorial endpapers; numerous full-color illustrations. Spine lightly sunned, else a fine copy in publisher's original green and orange slipcase (Slight rubbing around edges). Signed by the illustrator, Maurice Sendak.

Limited Edition. #242 of 250 signed and numbered copies. Long a favorite in Czechoslovakia, The Cunning Little Vixen is best known in the United States to music lovers familiar with the Janacek opera. The story starts when a forester, Bartos, captures a vixen, Sharp-Eyes, and brings her back home to raise as a family pet. Sharp-Eyes, however, can not stop causing trouble and eventually escapes the house. The rest of the tale follows Sharp-Eyes as she attempts to take revenge on Bartos, and eventually finds a mate of her own. Maurice Sendak, who designed the NYC Opera production of the Janacek opera, illustrates the story with considerable wit and charm.