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Fox strikes me as a microcosm of a wide-ranging and unfortunately deep-seated conspiracy against the child imagination and enchantment at large.

But on the topic of art, imagination, and children’s stories, Dahl’s Fantastic Mr.

Fox deserve more complete treatment than I am able to give here. Questions of political economy and technological society in the world of Mr.

But what captured my attention anew, and to my greater dismay, was the recurring problem that is endemic to children’s books: ugly art. Interest piqued, I decided to revisit Roald Dahl’s original children’s book. However, at the end, the three farmers leave the local to merge into a, presumably, chain of international supermarkets. There’s even somewhat of an economic critique in it: the three farms in the valley are already beholden to the capitalist logic from the start but are still portrayed in the midst of the idyllic countryside. Their home had been razed but, in the concluding scene, they discover the fruits of commercial society in the shape of an ‘international supermarket.’ In the end, they are banished from the comforting orange tinge of the wood for the dark, grey gloom of the urban sewers, and made complacent by the easy and sanitized food chain of the city. By the end, the foxes and the rest of the animals of the woods are banished to the sewers. A series of escalations, provocations, and altercations ends in tragedy (as Mrs. Naturally, a fox being a fox, conflict ensues. The problem is these neighboring farms in the valley were owned by the three worst farmers, the ‘horrible crooks’ Boggis, Bunce, and Bean. Fox’s desire for upward mobility and the finer things in life moves them to a fox hole under an idyllic tree in the woods, fit with a beautiful vista overlooking a spanning valley of fields and orchards. Fox and family’s story begins in a decent burrow, a home proper to the fox. Fox (2009) recently, I was first struck by its often less-than-subtle critical perspective on the onset of industrial society and its encroachment against nature and community.