Norwegian YouTube Hit Becomes Children’s Book

A YouTube musical comedy hit - and global digital bestseller - will hit the shelves as a children’s book in the US this Christmas.

Brothers Bard and Vegard Ylvisaker, who perform as Ylvis, shot to worldwide fame in September when the YouTube clip for their absurd song, What Does the Fox Say?, went viral. It has attracted more than 215 million hits on YouTube and sold one million copies in digital sales.

‘We thought that if we did a brilliant and really clever idea, it would seem pretentious and that we were trying to be pop stars, not comedians,’ Bard told the UK Telegraph. He says they intended to make a stupid song with high production values that bombed … but of course, it did the opposite.

Their kooky success has been compared to Psy, creator of Gangnam Style. (And, in an interesting bit of trivia, they’re the most successful Norwegian music artists since A-ha’s Take on Me in 1985.)


Simon & Schuster will publish an illustrated children’s book of the song in December; they’re printing 250,000 copies.

‘We actually started the process with the illustrator before we even uploaded the video to YouTube,’ Vegard told the Guardian. ‘As we were working with the song it just felt like it had the potential of becoming an interesting book as well, mostly because all of a sudden we found ourselves wondering what does the fox really say?’

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