Dressed in carnival-barker attire, insouciant Mr. Fox flourishes a vaudeville hook and invites readers to “Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!” and to “step right up for a battle of wits.” Clever Mr. Fox proposes a “nearly impossible” game: saying no to every question he asks. Inadvertent yea-sayers must return to page one and reread. Innocuous questions such as, “Are you ready to play?” are traps. And when readers are presented with an enormous ice cream sundae, the question, “Would you like a taste?” truly becomes diabolical. An offer of a Hawaiian vacation beach party (with a guaranteed “million billion” dollars for the first 20 guests) is also tough to decline. Accompanied by Wohnoutka’s chuckle-worthy cartoon images, the questions turn a bit more personal: “Are you stronger than a baby?” “Are you wearing any underwear?” In a laugh-out-loud marvel of excess and pacing, Mr. Fox challenges readers to put up with a tongue licking from slobbery, smelly Stinkpot the water buffalo. And the very last no-brainer question is a neatly engineered bit of puffery: “Have you ever read a funnier, better written, more beautifully illustrated book than this one?” But there’s no penalty for rereading this hilarious, irresistible book—perhaps readers will out-manipulate Mr. Fox after all!
