Fantastic Mr Fox

Fantastic Mr Fox is a children's novel by Roald Dahl, published in 1970 by George Allen & Unwin in the United Kingdom and Alfred A. Knopf in the United States, with illustrations by Donald Chaffin. The first Puffin paperback came out in 1974 and carried illustrations by Jill Bennett; later editions used work by Tony Ross in 1988 and Quentin Blake in 1996.

The story begins with theft that is presented as provision. Mr Fox steals food from three farmers in order to feed his family, and the farmers are described as cruel and brutish, so the moral position of the story is settled before the chase starts. Tired of being outwitted, Boggis, Bunce and Bean surround the foxes and wait, and the animals begin to starve in their burrow.

Mr Fox's answer is to go downwards and sideways rather than out, tunnelling into the farmers' own stores with the help of a friendly badger and carrying food back to a banquet for the other starving animals and their families. The book has been adapted repeatedly, including a 2009 stop-motion film by Wes Anderson with George Clooney as the voice of Mr Fox, a stage musical in 2016, an opera in 1998, and a Royal Mail commemorative stamp in 2012. Two audio readings exist, one narrated by Dahl himself.