Fairy Tale Spotlight: Fantastic Mr. Fox [Book Review]

[Contains some spoilers, but mainly I discuss its setting.]

"Fantastic Mr. Fox" was written by Roald Dahl and published in 1970. It is the very first book by this author that I have ever read. I really only got interested in reading it because I was so fond of the film. Seriously, that's one of the best movies I have ever seen.

I'm going out on a limb here, but I really do consider this story a fairy tale much in the same way that I consider Baetrix Potter books to be fairy tales. It exists in a world where animals can walk and talk, yet they are still considered feral animals. They are basically intelligent and civilized ferals.

The foxes still live in burrows and steal chickens, yet they act a bit more civil and even seem to have tables and chairs in their underground homes. The humans that live above entirely know about the civil nature of the foxes and other animals, yet they are still inclined to shoot them if they can.

"Fantastic Mr. Fox" is entirely designed from the ground up to be a children's book. This said, it does not mince words or do anything to patronize a child trying to understand it. When Fox's tail is shot off, his child just assumes it will grow back. Fox explains that this unfortunately will not happen, and he has lost his tail for the rest of his life. Details about the bloody stump and the near obliteration of the tail are tossed around freely throughout the story. There is no attempt to keep these details away from the young reader, and I am fine with that.

The children in the story, namely the animal children, are all represented well. They are cute, energetic, and desirous to please their parents. The adults act entirely like adults. It is a bit strange to read this sort of dialog within a children's book. They act very mature, making the story very accessible to an adult reader.

The villains of the story, the three farmers, are about as nasty as can be, probably by design. The story makes a hero out of an animal that is often considered a pest. The farmers are not only horrible, but they are actually very entertaining as a comedy team. One of them, named Bean, is always getting drunk on cider. I actually really liked them a lot, and it made it a lot easier to enjoy the foxes as they did bad things to them.

If I had to make a complaint, I'd say the chapters were dreadfully too short. The average reading time for a chapter ranged from 2 to 4 minutes. They were over before I could completely immerse myself into them. In many cases, there was no need to break them up that way. Two or three of them could be coupled together easily.

The odd shortness of this book made the whole story feel like I had watched an old Warner Brothers Cartoon. Not anything related to Loony Tunes, but one of those weird later ones that involved characters that that didn't show up very often like Bunny and Claude. The ending even felt like the ending of one of those cartoons. It was more or less a punchline to a joke. Nothing bad though.

I did enjoy this book and I do recommend it. I do, however, must say that I liked the movie a lot more for its surreal aesthetic and far more interesting interpretation. The movie did follow the book well enough. It's all there. It just added a lot more development to an otherwise bare bones story about a fox and his mission to overcome a few nasty farmers. If you do read it, you should probably read 2 or 3 chapters at a time, if not more. It will flow much better that way. I recommend this method of reading even if you are a child. The chapters were just too short for anyone to properly be immersed correctly.

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