Wes Anderson’s new film of Roald Dahl’s classic book, Fantastic Mr Fox,has been a huge hit with audiences and film critics alike. His quirky stop-motion animation is filled to the brim with beautiful textures.
Fantastic Mr Fox by Roald Dahlvoices and hilarious (albeit American) gags. But while Anderson’s film is brilliantly entertaining and modern, we need to return to the book to remind ourselves exactly why this tale is so close to so many hearts.
Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox tells the story of Mr Fox, his wife and his four children, who are at the peril of three nasty farmers:
Boggis and Bunce and Bean,
One fat, one short, one lean,
These horrible crooks,
So different in looks,
Were nonetheless equally mean.
These terrible men are out to get Mr Fox, enraged by the fact that he has been stealing their chickens, ducks, geese and cider to feed his young family.
“You’ve had your last chicken!” yelled Boggis. “You’ll never come prowling around my farm again!”’
The farmers come within a hair’s breadth of catching Mr Fox and his family, but he is no ordinary fox and uses his cunning to come up with a clever plan to escape their clutches, and have a lot of fun along the way.
‘Dad, I wish you would tell us where we are going’ said one of the children
‘I dare not do that,’ said Mr Fox, ‘because this place I am hoping to get to is so marvellous that if I described it to you now you would go crazy with excitement. And then, if we failed to get there (which is very possible) you would die of disappointment. I don’t want to raise your hopes too much, my darlings.’
In this tale of the animal world craftily getting its own back on greedy humans you will find danger, excitement and tenderness. Mr Fox may be a show-off who courts danger and likes to cause trouble, but he is also a loving father who wants to protect his family and friends from near-certain death.
With illustrations by much-loved illustrator Quentin Blake, this story is a classic from the nation’s most adored children’s author and deserves to be read again and again.
This story teaches children about the values of working together and helping others. Roald Dahl, in this children’s book Fantastic Mr Fox, also concentrates on the fragility of the animal world and how it can suffer at the hands of human greed. Fantastic Mr Fox has therefore been evaluated as a Splash of Green.
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Tags: Classic Children's Books, Quentin Blake, Roald Dahl, Wes Anderson