The book that we read over Christmas, the New Year and the first two months of this year was actually only some hundred pages long and contained an enormous amount of illustrations - it was 'Fantastic Mr. Fox' by Roald Dahl. While we were reading everybody was full of praise.

How funny!" or "Soooooo cute!" were just two of the delighted comments that reading group members made when asked how they liked our latest book. So the reason why it took us three months and three reading group meetings to deal with it can only be that nobody wanted to part with it.

In fact, the book had more readers than ever a reading group book at the Villa Elisabeth before - Conny, Miriam, Rieke, Nadine, Jenny, Marie, Mary, Mr Gimm and me.

Although it is rather short and 'only' a children's book we enjoyed lively, interesting and controversial discussions in our meetings. No one found fault with the book to begin with but, as already indicated, there were lots of things that we liked. These included the easily accessible language, the illustrations, the descriptions of the horrible farmers. However, some, needless to say, female members disliked the way in which the female characters were portrayed - physically weak and submissive, admiring their husbands and loving little homemakers. Grrrrrr! The amount of violence and cruelty left some puzzled and made them wonder if it was really suitable as a children's book.

About the story: Mr Fox and three disgusting farmers living nearby have a difficult relationship. Every night Mr Fox goes out, not to hunt, but to steal chickens, geese and turkeys. Bunce, Boggis and Beans would of course like to see him dead but they are no way near as cunning as fantastic Mr Fox. However, one fine day the drunkard among them has a brilliant idea. He has found the Fox's hole and so they decide to wait for him there and shoot him. But they only manage to get his tail. Mr Fox suffers a great deal (physically and mentally) but the farmers are so enraged that they start a war. They decide to stay right there and dig him out. When everything seems hopeless Mr Fox lives up to his appellation and shows that he is indeed fantastic. He develops a plan and makes his four young foxes help him. So they raid all the three farms, not leaving a trace behind, save and unite all digging animals and 'create a whole new way of life' (that is how wonderfully Miriam put it). In the end all the animals come to Mr Fox's place and join in the feast - saying they'll never need to go up again.

We wondered what literary genre this text belonged too and decided that it is a crossover of fable (personified animals as charaters, a moral that is not stated but which might be 'Never give up!'), fairy tale (characters are human beings and animals, a happy end, a fairytale -like beginning, repetitions, the number 3) and a novel.

The question whether or not the novel is suitable for children got different responses. Some were worried that the violence might give children nightmares. Some wondered whether children might still be persuaded to eat healthily and brush their teeth after getting to know that life obviously is possible without it. Also Mr Fox's thievery is not something that should set an example for impressionable kids…And what about the consumption of strong cider in large quantities? But others were quite relaxed and laid-back about the book and its effect on young readers.

We also talked about the issue of how to judge Mr Fox. Would we call him 'fanstastic' too? Well, fantastic means strange, bizarre, unreal, superb, formidable and eccentric. So we can say that he certainly is no average character. He is quite clever when it comes to outwitting the farmers. He has fantastic ideas to save his family (after he got them into this mess). He, most importantly, is a fantastic digger with an even more fantastic sense of direction.

The book reminded us of other books ("The Wind in the Willows" with almost the same set of characters) and some films (British PoWs breaking free from German camps by digging). And of course we examined how this Roald Dahl book compares to others by the same author. Only some of us had actually read works by him. But it turned out that everybody had seen screen versions of his books (Matilda, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). So we decided that he has a great liking for eccentric characters and tends to have protagonists who are either black or white, very bad or very good.

We found out that this book exists as a play, an opera and since November as a screen version with Georg Clooney and Meryl Streep. In the end we decided to stick to reading about animals for another book. It is going to be "Animal farm" by Georg Orwell. Happy reading! Claudia Zimmermann