Mail-Order Kid

When his par­ents adopt a six-year-old boy from Korea, Flip Doty does­n’t see any rea­son why he can’t order a red fox through the mail as well.

Flip’s trou­bles begin when his new broth­er, Todd, does embar­rass­ing things in front of Flip’s friends, like eat­ing fire­flies and tak­ing off his clothes in the mid­dle of Wool­worth’s, while at the same time Vick­ie the fox wreaks hav­oc on the house­hold. Add to this the flubbed poet­ry read­ing in school and the trou­bles he’s hav­ing with his grades, and it seems that more than just Flip’s sta­tus as an only child is going down the tubes.

But it’s when he has to face the pos­si­bil­i­ty of los­ing Vick­ie that Flip starts to see the par­al­lels between the fox and his broth­er, as each tries to adapt to a new home.

Joyce McDon­ald has writ­ten a warm, humor­ous and very real sto­ry about how, through every­day life with an adopt­ed broth­er and a pet fox, a young boy learns the impor­tance of accep­tance and understanding.