Fantastic Mr Fox Audio CD Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
0141350237 | Format: EPUB
Fantastic Mr Fox Audio CD Description
- Audio CD
- Publisher: Puffin Audiobooks; Unabridged edition
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0141350237
- ISBN-13: 978-0141350233
- Product Dimensions: 5.6 x 4.7 x 0.5 inches
- Shipping Weight: 3.5 ounces
There seems to have been a major shift in children's literature recently, thanks, of course, to the pre-eminence of Harry Potter. The latter is a hero parents can be proud of - bespectacled, middle-class, studious: the subtext is education is fun, enlightening and empowering.
The major children's writer before JK Rowling was Roald Dahl, who boasted few of these virtues, offering children cruel wit, and a morbid, often murderous mistrust of parents, adults, education and authority in general. He also implied that children could be malevolent and destructive. Parents hated him - I had to discover Dahl through friends; my mum bought me Enid Blyton. There was always the thrilling feeling that you were doing something illicit or conspiratorial reading Roald Dahl.
The hero of 'Fantastic Mr Fox' is a thief, a violater of property and business, and a murderer and torturer of animals, traits unlikely to endear him to the English middle classes. On the other hand, he rejoices in family values, still endearingly in love with his wife, and a great father. Under impossible odds, he tries to save his family and a host of other animals from the cruelty of three vile farmers, Boggis, Bunce and Bean, who are sick of the varmint's nocturnal sorties for their produce.
First they try to shoot him, but only pepper his tail (a deliciously gruesome episode). Next they dig into his tunnel, but he can dig faster. They use huge mechanical diggers, turning a hill into a valley. They try to starve him, surrounding the area with weapon-wielding minions.
The story of 'Fox' is very simple with few twists and turns.
In Roald Dahl's chapter book, Fantastic Mr. Fox, he tells a traditional story in which Fantastic Mr. Fox outsmarts three halfwit farmers. Like most foxes, Fantastic Mr. Fox is sharp and cunning. He lives near three farms that belong to very unpleasant farmers. The farmers are described as having nasty personalities, horrible eating habits, and disgusting features. Each night, Mr. Fox steals food from the farmers to feed his own family. The farmers are furious and band together to find Mr. Fox and 'string him up by his tail.' They find his hole and wait for him to come out so they can shoot him.
When Mr. Fox refuses to surrender, the angry men try to dig him out with shovels and then with farm equipment and bulldozers. Eventually, they take all the workers from their farms and scatter them over the hill in order to stand guard so that the foxes cannot escape. As the farmers wait, the Fox family is slowly starving. Mr. Fox gets a brilliant idea and soon he and all of the underground animals find a way to pull the biggest trick of all on the three nasty farmers. They get food for their families off of the farmers' own ignorance and the farmers continue to miserably wait for Mr. Fox to emerge from his hole.
This book is a classic example of Dahl's writing style. The adults are always mean and rotten, while the children and animals are smart and good. This book raises a number of questions that could make for a very interesting discussion. Mr. Fox feeds his family by stealing food from the farmers. Does that makes stealing ok just because the men he stole from were mean? The Badger brings up this important issue and Mr. Fox sweet talks himself out of trouble, but should stealing ever be considered ok?
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