Fantastic Mr Fox - Roald Dahl > Reviews > Fox on the Run

Author's product rating:   

Would you listen to it again?	Absolutely
Story	Good
Characters	Good
Listenability	Pretty compelling but not addictive

Advantages:	Easy to read, interesting characters, Fun
Disadvantages:	None to mention

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Being a parent has so many advantages, doesn't it? You know all the best ones… watching your children grow, and being so proud, having someone around who is actually a part of you - of course I could go on forever. And another great advantage is rediscovering children's literature with them. My daughter is three and three quarters and a few nights ago, over a series of four nights, I read to her the Roald Dahl classic 'The Fantastic Mr Fox.'

Now, while I was growing up I read Dahl's other classics, such as 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,' but this one eluded me. So I think I was more excited than my daughter about reading it! The nights went by and I was very pleased, as each night ended, to observe that my daughter was looking forward to what happened next… Before each bedtime I would say 'Do you want to find out what is happening to Mr Fox tonight?' To which she would reply, 'Oh Yeah!'

But what of the story, then? This is classic British literature from a classic British writer. Mr Fox lives in a hole under a hill with his wife and four children. He is a canny fox, who goes out each night to raid one of three farms in the area. They eat well from these farms: chickens, ducks or turkeys. However, the farmers who own the farms are wise to him and are always trying to capture him. Mr Fox is clever, though, and knows many ways to deceive them.

The three farmer have had enough of their livestock being taken by the fox and decide that the only way to put an end to Mr Fox is to wait by the hole he lives until he comes out and kill him. One may feel a kind of justice 'might' be done here, however the three farmers in question are pretty gross, in appearance and manners, so the reader finds him or herself wholeheartedly behind Mr Fox.

The farmers are Boggis, the chicken farmer who is enormously fat - because he eats three boiled chickens smothered in dumplings for each meal. Bunce is the duck and goose farmer, who is a kind of pot-bellied dwarf with a beastly temper. Bean is the turkey and apple farmer who is tall and skinny and drinks nothing but cider and reeks of the stuff. Very unsavoury in deed! They three wait outside Mr Fox's hole with guns and when Mr Fox does make an appearance they only manage to shoot off his tail before he hurries back into the his den.

The three farmers start to dig into the hole and Mr Fox and his family dig out of their way. It soon becomes an obsession for the farmers and they get in mechanical diggers. The foxes stay in the hole, slowly starving, knowing that the three farmers want them all dead. But at the same time, other animals in the hill, such as Badger cannot escape…

I will not give much more away, as at 90 pages (along with sketches) this is a short book. Let me just say that Mr Fox gets the better of the gross farmers and a kind of justice is done. I liked this book - it was quick enough to keep my daughter entertained and any longer and she might have started to asking for Postman Pat instead (something I dread…) Roald Dahl's descriptive is great and his farmers are typically Dahl… If anything, I was a bit unsure about reading of Mr Fox killing chickens, as it seemed a bit bloodthirsty, but I don't think my daughter minded…

I will be checking out more…and no doubt boring you with more opinions…

The book was first written in 1970. My daughter's version is the Puffin one published in 1988 and featuring great illustrations by Tony Ross.

Thanks for reading…

Borg 2003