Fantastic Mr Fox

Mr. Fox is an anthropomorphic, tricky, and clever fox who lives underground beside a tree with his wife and four children. In order to feed his family, he makes nightly visits to farms owned by three wicked, rude, cruel and dim-witted farmers named Boggis, Bunce and Bean, whereupon he seizes the livestock available on each man's farm. 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 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 trio 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 fox, surrounding Mr. Fox's hole and waiting until he is 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 routes he has taken above ground, he and his children tunnel through the ground and wind up burrowing to one of Boggis' four chicken houses. Mr. Fox kills several chickens and sends his eldest 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 ducks, geese, hams, bacon and carrots (as noted by one of the Small Foxes, the Rabbits will require vegetables) and then to Bean's secret cider cellar. Here, they are nearly caught by the Beans' 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 for them daily and where none of them will need to worry about the farmers any more. Everyone joyfully cheers for this idea, while Boggis, Bunce, and Bean are left waiting in vain for the 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.[1]