Author | Roald Dahl |
---|---|
Illustrator |
|
Language | English |
Series | Roald Dahl Collection |
Genre | Children's and survival |
Publisher |
|
Publication date | 1 June 1970 |
Publication place | United Kingdom |
Media type | Hardcover |
Pages | 96 |
ISBN | 0-394-80497-X |
Fantastic Mr Fox is a children's novel written by British author Roald Dahl. It was published in 1970, by George Allen & Unwin in the UK and Alfred A. Knopf in the U.S., with illustrations by Donald Chaffin. The first Puffin paperback, first issued in 1974, featured illustrations by Jill Bennett. Later editions have featured illustrations by Tony Ross (1988) and Quentin Blake (1996). The story is about Mr Fox and how he outwits his farmer neighbours to steal their food from right under their noses.
In 2009, it was adapted into a stop-motion animated film by Wes Anderson and included the voice of George Clooney as Mr Fox. The novel was also adapted into a musical in 2016, and an opera in 1998 which in 2019 was recorded by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and Odyssey Opera.
In 2012, Mr Fox appeared on a Royal Mail commemorative postage stamp. [1] Two audio readings of the novel were released, one with the author narrating, and another with actor Martin Jarvis narrating.
Mr Fox is an anthropomorphic, tricky, and clever fox who lives underground beside a tree with his wife and four children. To feed his family, he makes nightly visits to local farms owned by three cruel, rude, wicked and dim-witted farmers named Boggis, Bunce, and Bean, stealing poultry from each. Tired of being outsmarted by Mr Fox, the triumvirate devise a plan to ambush him as he leaves his burrow, but they succeed only in shooting off his tail.
The three farmers then dig up the Foxes' burrow using spades and then excavators. The Foxes manage to escape by burrowing further beneath the ground to safety. The farmers are ridiculed for their persistence, but they refuse to give up and vow not to return to their farms until they have caught Mr Fox. They then choose to lay siege to the Foxes, surrounding the hole and waiting until Mr Fox becomes hungry enough to come out. Cornered by their enemies, Mr Fox and his family, and all the other underground creatures that live around the hill, begin to starve.
After three days trapped underground, Mr Fox devises a plot to acquire food. Working from his memory of the aboveground routes he has used, he and his children tunnel into Boggis's four chicken houses. Mr Fox kills several chickens and sends his son to carry the animals back home to Mrs Fox. On the way to their next destination, Mr Fox runs into his friend Badger and asks him to accompany him on his mission, as well as to extend an invitation to the feast to the other burrowing animals - Badger and his family, as well as the Moles, the Rabbits and the Weasels - to apologize for getting them caught up in the farmers' hunt. Aided by Badger, the animals tunnel to Bunce's storehouse for additional food, and then to Bean's secret cider cellar. Here, they are nearly caught by Bean's servant Mabel and have an unpleasant confrontation with the cellar's resident, Rat. They carry their loot back home, where Mrs Fox has prepared a great celebratory banquet for the starving underground animals and their families.
At the table, Mr Fox invites everyone to live in a secret underground neighbourhood with him and his family, where he will hunt on their behalf daily and where none of them will need to worry about the farmers anymore. Everyone joyfully cheers for this idea, while Boggis, Bunce, and Bean are left waiting in vain for Mr Fox to emerge from his hole.
The book ends with the words "And so far as I know, they are still waiting".
In 1994, Fantastic Mr Fox was awarded the Read Aloud BILBY Award from the Children's Book Council of Australia. [2]
Despite Roald Dahl having enjoined his publishers not to "so much as change a single comma in one of my books", in February 2023 Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Books, announced it would be re-writing portions of many of Dahl's children's novels, changing the language to, in the publisher's words, "ensure that it can continue to be enjoyed by all today". [3] The decision was met with sharp criticism from groups and public figures including authors Salman Rushdie [4] [5] and Christopher Paolini, [5] former British prime minister Rishi Sunak, [4] [6] Queen Camilla, [4] [7] Kemi Badenoch, [8] PEN America, [4] and Brian Cox. [8] Dahl's publishers in the United States, France, and the Netherlands declined to incorporate the changes. [4]
In Fantastic Mr. Fox, more than fifty changes were made, including removing the word black from the description of tractors ("The machines were both black"), removing references to characters' height and weight and changing Mr. Fox’s son to a daughter. [9] [10] A line saying that "fat Boggis was hopping about like a dervish" was also altered to just "Boggis was hopping about like a frog". [10]
The book was adapted into a stop-motion animated film by director Wes Anderson. It was released in 2009 and features the voices of George Clooney as Mr Fox, Meryl Streep as Mrs Fox, Bill Murray as Badger, Robert Hurlstone as Boggis, Hugo Guinness as Bunce and Michael Gambon as Bean. The film's plot focuses more on Mr Fox's relationship with Mrs Fox and his son, which is pitted against Mr Fox's desire to steal chickens as a means of feeling like his natural self. The film adds scenes before Mr Fox attacks the three farmers and after they bulldozed the hill, as well as a slightly altered ending and more background on Mr Fox's past life as a thief of food. The Foxes' four children are replaced by Ash (voiced by Jason Schwartzman), a small and insecure fox who seeks his father's approval and Mrs. Fox's nephew Kristofferson (voiced by Eric Chase Anderson), who excels in athletics and is a source of jealousy for Ash.
The book was adapted into a play of the same name by David Wood and was first performed at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry in 2001. The play is licensed (in the U.K. only) through Casarotto Ramsay Ltd. for repertory performances and Samuel French Ltd. for amateur performances. [11]
A musical adaptation of the book ran at the Nuffield Theatre, Southampton during Christmas 2016 before touring the UK in early 2017. [12] [13]
Tobias Picker adapted the book into an opera which had its world premiere at the Los Angeles Opera performing 9–22 December in 1998. [14] [15] The opera starred Gerald Finley as Mr Fox and Suzanna Guzman as Mrs Fox. [14] A specially commissioned new version of this opera by Opera Holland Park was performed in the gardens and natural scenery of Holland Park in the summer of 2010 staged by Stephen Barlow. This version starred Grant Doyle as Mr. Fox, Olivia Ray as Mrs. Fox, Henry Grant Kerswell, Peter Kent and John Lofthouse as Farmers Boggis, Bunce and Bean. [16]
In 2019, Fantastic Mr. Fox was recorded by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and Odyssey Opera who were subsequently awarded the Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording. [17]
Roald Dahl was a British author of popular children's literature and short stories, a poet, screenwriter and a wartime fighter ace. His books have sold more than 300 million copies worldwide. He has been called "one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century".
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a 1964 children's novel by British author Roald Dahl. The story features the adventures of young Charlie Bucket inside the chocolate factory of eccentric chocolatier Willy Wonka.
The BFG is a 1982 children's novel by British author Roald Dahl. It is an expansion of a short story from Dahl's 1975 novel Danny, the Champion of the World. The book is dedicated to Dahl's oldest daughter, Olivia, who had died of measles encephalitis at the age of seven in 1962.
Matilda is a 1988 children's novel by British author Roald Dahl. It was published by Jonathan Cape. The story features Matilda Wormwood, a precocious child with an uncaring mother and father, and her time in a school run by the tyrannical headmistress Miss Trunchbull.
The Witches is a 1983 children's novel by British author Roald Dahl. A dark fantasy, the story is set partly in Norway and partly in England, and features the experiences of a young English boy and his Norwegian grandmother in a world where child-hating societies of witches secretly exist in every country. The witches are ruled by the vicious and powerful Grand High Witch, who arrives in England to organise her plan to turn all of the children there into mice.
James and the Giant Peach is a children's novel written in 1961 by British author Roald Dahl. The first edition, published by Alfred Knopf, featured illustrations by Nancy Ekholm Burkert. There have been re-illustrated versions of it over the years, done by Michael Simeon, Emma Chichester Clark, Lane Smith and Quentin Blake. It was adapted into a film of the same name in 1996 which was directed by Henry Selick, and a musical in 2010.
The Twits is a 1980 children's novel by British author Roald Dahl. It was first published by Jonathan Cape. The story features The Twits, a spiteful, idle, unkempt couple who continuously play nasty practical jokes on each other to amuse themselves, and exercise their devious wickedness on their pet monkeys.
George's Marvellous Medicine is a children's novel written by Roald Dahl and illustrated by Quentin Blake. First published by Jonathan Cape in 1981, it features George Kranky, an eight-year-old boy who concocts his own miracle elixir to replace his tyrannical grandmother's regular prescription medicine.
Esio Trot is a 1990 children's novel by British author Roald Dahl. The title is an anadrome of "tortoise". It was the last of Dahl's books to be published in his lifetime; he died just two months later.
Danny, the Champion of the World is a 1975 children's novel by British author Roald Dahl. The plot centres on Danny, a young English boy, and his father, William. They live in a Gypsy caravan, fix cars for a living in their mechanic shop and partake in poaching pheasants. It was first published on February 14, 1975, in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. and in the United Kingdom by Jonathan Cape.
The Enormous Crocodile is a British children's story, written by British author Roald Dahl and illustrated by Quentin Blake. A picture book written for younger readers than Dahl's other works, the story tells of a hungry crocodile who aims to eat human children via using various, not-quite-impenetrable disguises.
Fantastic Mr. Fox is a 2009 American animated adventure-comedy film directed by Wes Anderson from a screenplay by Anderson and Noah Baumbach and based on the novel of the same name by Roald Dahl. Featuring stop-motion animation, it stars George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe, and Owen Wilson. In the film, a spree of thefts led by Mr. Fox (Clooney) results in his family, and later his community, being hunted down by three farmers.
Mr Fox is a British folk rock group.
Fantastic Mr. Fox is an opera in three acts composed by Tobias Picker to a libretto by Donald Sturrock based on Roald Dahl's children's novel of the same name. It was premiered by Los Angeles Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on December 9, 1998.
Roald Dahl (1916–1990) was a British author and scriptwriter, and "the most popular writer of children's books since Enid Blyton", according to Philip Howard, the literary editor of The Times.
Fantastic Mr Fox is a musical stage adaptation of the children's novel of the same name by Roald Dahl, adapted by Sam Holcroft with music by Arthur Darvill and lyrics by Holcroft, Darvill, Darren Clark and Al Muriel. The story follows Mr Fox who hatches a plan to outsmart his three farmer neighbours in order to feed his family and friends.
Jones' Hill Wood is a 1.8-hectare (4.4-acre) piece of ancient woodland near Wendover in Buckinghamshire, south England. Formed mainly of beech trees, the wood is part of the Chiltern Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Almost half of the wood is planned to be chopped down to make way for the route of High Speed 2 (HS2) and the topsoil will be translocated. In October 2020, a protest camp was evicted.
Roald Dahl's Matilda the Musical, or simply Matilda the Musical, or Matilda, is a 2022 fantasy musical film directed by Matthew Warchus from a screenplay by Dennis Kelly, based on the stage musical of the same name by Tim Minchin and Kelly, which in turn was based on the 1988 novel Matilda by Roald Dahl. It is the second film adaptation of the novel, following Matilda (1996). The film stars Alisha Weir as the title character, alongside Lashana Lynch, Stephen Graham, Andrea Riseborough, Sindhu Vee, and Emma Thompson. In the plot, Matilda Wormwood (Weir), who is neglected and mistreated by her parents, develops psychokinetic abilities to deal with Miss Trunchbull (Thompson), the ruthless and cruel headmistress of Crunchem Hall School.
Puffin Books, the children's imprint of the British publisher Penguin Books, expurgated various works by British author Roald Dahl in 2023, sparking controversy.