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The Fox and the Cat
A collection of ten Grimm fairy tales with animal characters, including "The Wolf and the Seven Kids" and "The Hare and the Hedgehog."
58 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1812
About the author
Kevin Crossley-Holland
211 books260 followersKevin Crossley-Holland is an English poet and prize-winning author for children. His books include Waterslain Angels, a detective story set in north Norfolk in 1955, and Moored Man: A Cycle of North Norfolk Poems; Gatty's Tale, a medieval pilgrimage novel; and the Arthur trilogy (The Seeing Stone, At the Crossing-Places and King of the Middle March), which combines historical fiction with the retelling of Arthurian legend.
The Seeing Stone won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award and the Smarties Prize Bronze Medal. The Arthur trilogy has won worldwide critical acclaim and has been translated into 21 languages.
Crossley-Holland has translated Beowulf from the Anglo-Saxon, and his retellings of traditional tales include The Penguin Book of Norse Myths and British Folk Tales (reissued as The Magic Lands). His collaborations with composers include two operas with Nicola Lefanu ("The Green Children" and "The Wildman") and one with Rupert Bawden, "The Sailor’s Tale"; song cycles with Sir Arthur Bliss and William Mathias; and a carol with Stephen Paulus for King’s College, Cambridge. His play, The Wuffings, (co-authored with Ivan Cutting) was produced by Eastern Angles in 1997.
He often lectures abroad on behalf of the British Council, regularly leads sessions for teachers and librarians, and visits primary and secondary schools. He offers poetry and prose workshops and talks on the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings, King Arthur, heroines and heroes, and myth, legend and folk-tale.
After seven years teaching in Minnesota, where he held an Endowed Chair in the Humanities, Kevin Crossley-Holland returned to the north Norfolk coast in East Anglia, where he now lives.
He has a Minnesotan wife, Linda, two sons (Kieran and Dominic) and two daughters (Oenone and Eleanor). He is an Honorary Fellow of St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, a patron of the Society of Storytelling and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
The Seeing Stone won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award and the Smarties Prize Bronze Medal. The Arthur trilogy has won worldwide critical acclaim and has been translated into 21 languages.
Crossley-Holland has translated Beowulf from the Anglo-Saxon, and his retellings of traditional tales include The Penguin Book of Norse Myths and British Folk Tales (reissued as The Magic Lands). His collaborations with composers include two operas with Nicola Lefanu ("The Green Children" and "The Wildman") and one with Rupert Bawden, "The Sailor’s Tale"; song cycles with Sir Arthur Bliss and William Mathias; and a carol with Stephen Paulus for King’s College, Cambridge. His play, The Wuffings, (co-authored with Ivan Cutting) was produced by Eastern Angles in 1997.
He often lectures abroad on behalf of the British Council, regularly leads sessions for teachers and librarians, and visits primary and secondary schools. He offers poetry and prose workshops and talks on the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings, King Arthur, heroines and heroes, and myth, legend and folk-tale.
After seven years teaching in Minnesota, where he held an Endowed Chair in the Humanities, Kevin Crossley-Holland returned to the north Norfolk coast in East Anglia, where he now lives.
He has a Minnesotan wife, Linda, two sons (Kieran and Dominic) and two daughters (Oenone and Eleanor). He is an Honorary Fellow of St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, a patron of the Society of Storytelling and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
May 9, 2026
The Fox and the Cat - Animal Tales from Grimm (1985) features eleven Brothers Grimm animal fables, translated into English by Kevin Crossley-Holland and Susanne Lugert and with accompanying artwork by Susan Varley, namely The Fox and the Cat (Der Fuchs und die Katze), Old Sultan (Der alte Sultan), The Hedge-king (Der Zaunkönig), The Cat and Mouse in Partnership (Katze und Maus in Gesellschaft), The Fox and the Geese (Der Fuchs und die Gänse), The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids (Der Wolf und die sieben jungen Geißlein), The Fox and the Horse (Der Fuchs und das Pferd), The Hare and the Hedgehog (Der Hase und der Igel), The Wolf and the Fox (Der Wolf und der Fuchs), The Hedge-king and the Bear (Der Zaunkönig und der Bär) and The Bremen Town Musicians (Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten).
So the eleven stories of The Fox and the Cat - Animal Tales from Grimm are short, pointedly pithy (perhaps even a wee bit message heavy at times but also not really exaggeratedly didactic either) and with each of the presented tales having been nicely ably, nicely adeptly rendered into English and that Crossley-Holland and Lugert are following Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm's original German texts pretty well faithfully, and that yes, I did indeed check and verify this online (so that The Fox and the Cat - Animal Tales from Grimm is not to be seen and approached as a loose Brothers Grimm adaptation but as an actual word for word so to speak translation) albeit also and thankfully so never textually haltingly, never awkwardly and also gloriously even managing to retain all of the Brothers Grimm's humour and social satire (since in Kinder- und Hausmärchen, in particular the featured animal fables are usually majorly filled with very much satire, irony, sometimes even slapstick and death, and that for example the demise of the hare in The Hare and the Hedgehog does not really feel truly sad and tragic but instead rather weirdly hilarious and equally so kind of elicits a lot of in my opinion totally and majorly justified Schadenfreude).
With the animals inhabiting the pages of The Fox and the Cat - Animal Tales from Grimm generally exhibiting (mirroring) mostly negative human character deficiencies such as arrogance, greed, narcissism and sometimes even nastiness simply for its own sake (although also as a counterbalance sometimes demonstrating kindness and helpfulness as well) and generally having the physically weaker win through with their cunning and ingenuity so to speak, to triumph over physically stronger and generally hugely boastful bullies, yes, the eleven stories of The Fox and the Cat - Animal Tales from Grimm are engagingly fun, they are (in my opinion) suitable for reading aloud to children from about the age of five onwards and of course equally so for independent reading (and with Susan Varley's colourfully expressive pen and ink artwork wonderfully visually reflecting the selected Grimm fables and Kevin Crossley-Holland and Susanne Lugert's translation of them) and ranging from the well-known such as for example The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids (Der Wolf und die sieben jungen Geißlein) and The Bremen Town Musicians (Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten) to more unfamiliar tales like The Fox and the Cat (Der Fuchs und die Katze) and Old Sultan (Der alte Sultan), yes, yes, yes, all of The Fox and the Cat - Animal Tales from Grimm makes both my inner child and adult me hugely smile.
Five stars as a rating from me (from both my inner child and adult me collectively) for the text proper of The Fox and the Cat - Animal Tales from Grimm, for the contents, for the thematics of the presented, of the eleven included animal themed fables, and for how stylistically Crossley- Holland and Lugert have rendered Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm into English so really nicely and flowingly (but that this will have to unfortunately be to lowered to four stars, since my/our huge enjoyment of The Fox and the Cat - Animal Tales from Grimm notwithstanding, the preface is so totally basic that it is kind of massively lacking and that the Brothers Grimm's Kinder- und Hausmärchen was in fact published in many different editions, that the most used and the most common edition is actually the one from 1857 and not like it is claimed by Kevin Crossley-Holland and Susanne Lugert the 1812 and 1815 ones.
So the eleven stories of The Fox and the Cat - Animal Tales from Grimm are short, pointedly pithy (perhaps even a wee bit message heavy at times but also not really exaggeratedly didactic either) and with each of the presented tales having been nicely ably, nicely adeptly rendered into English and that Crossley-Holland and Lugert are following Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm's original German texts pretty well faithfully, and that yes, I did indeed check and verify this online (so that The Fox and the Cat - Animal Tales from Grimm is not to be seen and approached as a loose Brothers Grimm adaptation but as an actual word for word so to speak translation) albeit also and thankfully so never textually haltingly, never awkwardly and also gloriously even managing to retain all of the Brothers Grimm's humour and social satire (since in Kinder- und Hausmärchen, in particular the featured animal fables are usually majorly filled with very much satire, irony, sometimes even slapstick and death, and that for example the demise of the hare in The Hare and the Hedgehog does not really feel truly sad and tragic but instead rather weirdly hilarious and equally so kind of elicits a lot of in my opinion totally and majorly justified Schadenfreude).
With the animals inhabiting the pages of The Fox and the Cat - Animal Tales from Grimm generally exhibiting (mirroring) mostly negative human character deficiencies such as arrogance, greed, narcissism and sometimes even nastiness simply for its own sake (although also as a counterbalance sometimes demonstrating kindness and helpfulness as well) and generally having the physically weaker win through with their cunning and ingenuity so to speak, to triumph over physically stronger and generally hugely boastful bullies, yes, the eleven stories of The Fox and the Cat - Animal Tales from Grimm are engagingly fun, they are (in my opinion) suitable for reading aloud to children from about the age of five onwards and of course equally so for independent reading (and with Susan Varley's colourfully expressive pen and ink artwork wonderfully visually reflecting the selected Grimm fables and Kevin Crossley-Holland and Susanne Lugert's translation of them) and ranging from the well-known such as for example The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids (Der Wolf und die sieben jungen Geißlein) and The Bremen Town Musicians (Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten) to more unfamiliar tales like The Fox and the Cat (Der Fuchs und die Katze) and Old Sultan (Der alte Sultan), yes, yes, yes, all of The Fox and the Cat - Animal Tales from Grimm makes both my inner child and adult me hugely smile.
Five stars as a rating from me (from both my inner child and adult me collectively) for the text proper of The Fox and the Cat - Animal Tales from Grimm, for the contents, for the thematics of the presented, of the eleven included animal themed fables, and for how stylistically Crossley- Holland and Lugert have rendered Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm into English so really nicely and flowingly (but that this will have to unfortunately be to lowered to four stars, since my/our huge enjoyment of The Fox and the Cat - Animal Tales from Grimm notwithstanding, the preface is so totally basic that it is kind of massively lacking and that the Brothers Grimm's Kinder- und Hausmärchen was in fact published in many different editions, that the most used and the most common edition is actually the one from 1857 and not like it is claimed by Kevin Crossley-Holland and Susanne Lugert the 1812 and 1815 ones.
September 5, 2018
Ah arrogance! What have you done to Mr; Fox!
June 8, 2016
A haughty fox derides a simpler cat, only to be killed by dogs. The shortest, possibly best story ever on the folly of the masses : arrogant complacency.
"Ah, Mr. Fox," cried the cat. "You with your hundred arts are left in the lurch. Had you been able to climb like me, you would not have lost your life."
"Ah, Mr. Fox," cried the cat. "You with your hundred arts are left in the lurch. Had you been able to climb like me, you would not have lost your life."
September 21, 2017
Very short and simple, this is the story of a meek and honest cat, and an arrogant and proud fox. An excellent story of karma, good will, and 'what goes around comes around'. This definitely made me chuckle a little bit. A definite recommendation.
December 5, 2021
An interesting collection.... I have never heard most of these stories before, although they are definitely in the same vein as the better-known Grimm fairy tales. A couple of these were pretty gruesome! This edition also has some beautiful illustrations.
January 17, 2019
Shortest tale in my book. I could only find this edition though, so I guess I'll have cheated on page count at the end of 2019 😁
September 21, 2020
A very short story where the fox is haughty but the cat beats him A fun story.
May 29, 2021
The Fox and the Cat follows the story of a fox who, after admonishing a cat for being simple, is killed through his lack of one useful art. Because the story is so short, it is somewhat surprising how much is put into the work. It talks about arrogance and the value of knowledge.
I think that the Fox's conduct toward the cat is easily identifiable as being rather abhorrent, and his arrogance is ironically contrasted with the cat's simplicity when he dies and she does not; his arrogance was foolish.
For the discussion of knowledge, I suppose I should write a bit more broadly. The fox is knowledgeable in many things, but he doesn't know how to dodge the dogs, and being ignorant of this one important thing, he died; thus, we see that knowledge is valuable through it's usefulness to us. But the story also hints at the idea that additional knowledge might not be all that bad, either, for the cat would have presumably followed and learned from the fox if the hunters had not suddenly appeared; if so, then we see the cat as a creature which has already learned the valuable knowledge it needs, and can use it's time in the pursuit of things that interest it most--even if those things are not important for survival. If my presumption is too presumptuous, we see the cat ask about Mr. Fox's day and current happiness, making known to us, the humble reader, that our cat is willing to learn new, unnecessary information, for whatever reason our cat has in asking; and, of course, this might also be supported by the fact that she initializes the conversation with the understanding that Mr. Fox is much respected and clever, things which one wouldn't ordinarily note if they were not of interest to one in some manner.
I felt this to be a rather fantastic story, although quite short. It reminded me of a Chinese myth about a man who, in attempting to escape a tiger, expressly tells his son to kill the tiger in just the right way as to allow for the skinning and selling of its pelt at highest value--thus, of course, valuing his life less than money--and dying in consequence.
I think that the Fox's conduct toward the cat is easily identifiable as being rather abhorrent, and his arrogance is ironically contrasted with the cat's simplicity when he dies and she does not; his arrogance was foolish.
For the discussion of knowledge, I suppose I should write a bit more broadly. The fox is knowledgeable in many things, but he doesn't know how to dodge the dogs, and being ignorant of this one important thing, he died; thus, we see that knowledge is valuable through it's usefulness to us. But the story also hints at the idea that additional knowledge might not be all that bad, either, for the cat would have presumably followed and learned from the fox if the hunters had not suddenly appeared; if so, then we see the cat as a creature which has already learned the valuable knowledge it needs, and can use it's time in the pursuit of things that interest it most--even if those things are not important for survival. If my presumption is too presumptuous, we see the cat ask about Mr. Fox's day and current happiness, making known to us, the humble reader, that our cat is willing to learn new, unnecessary information, for whatever reason our cat has in asking; and, of course, this might also be supported by the fact that she initializes the conversation with the understanding that Mr. Fox is much respected and clever, things which one wouldn't ordinarily note if they were not of interest to one in some manner.
I felt this to be a rather fantastic story, although quite short. It reminded me of a Chinese myth about a man who, in attempting to escape a tiger, expressly tells his son to kill the tiger in just the right way as to allow for the skinning and selling of its pelt at highest value--thus, of course, valuing his life less than money--and dying in consequence.
March 13, 2024
Jacob Grimm, alongside his brother Wilhelm, is renowned for compiling "Grimm's Fairy Tales," a collection of German folktales. This book is a captivating journey into the heart of folklore, presenting a mixture of enchanting and sometimes dark stories that have fascinated readers for generations. Grimm's work is not just a mere collection of tales; it's a profound exploration of the human condition, morals, and the cultural heritage of Germany. The stories range from the well-loved "Cinderella" and "Snow White" to the less known but equally intriguing tales. Each story is a masterpiece of fantasy, imbued with timeless themes and moral lessons, making this book a valuable treasure for both young and adult readers. Jacob Grimm's contribution through this compilation has left an indelible mark on literature and continues to inspire the imagination of readers worldwide.
October 8, 2023
For the month of October, the month of all Hallows Eve, I promised myself to only read Horror books and tales. What better way to celebrate than to read at least on Grimm Fairytale a day. I have the whole collection from the Grimm Brothers and I have been working my way through each year, each October. This year I shall try and finish this book collection.
I don't even know what happened. I read it and to me it felt like there was nothing there. Guess it didn't stand out well to me.
I don't even know what happened. I read it and to me it felt like there was nothing there. Guess it didn't stand out well to me.
July 5, 2024
FULL REVIEW ON MY WEBSITE
https://thebookcornerchronicles.com/2...
It is different but not that different from what you might remember from first hearing this tale as a kid.
The plot here are very good but also dark which is the mix which I personally like a lot.
The writing style here was very old and you could feel the vibe of old the Europe which but it also felt like there was something missing.
https://thebookcornerchronicles.com/2...
It is different but not that different from what you might remember from first hearing this tale as a kid.
The plot here are very good but also dark which is the mix which I personally like a lot.
The writing style here was very old and you could feel the vibe of old the Europe which but it also felt like there was something missing.
January 22, 2025
I like to think that this story might be a continuation of The Fox and His Cousin but I don't know if it actually is. If it is an epilogue, then the reader sees the fox get his comeuppance. A cat meets an arrogant fox, who brags about all of his gifts and cunning, while the cat admits to only one significant talent. But when they encounter a pack of hunting dogs, the fox learns the hard way that sometimes, less is more.
August 18, 2026
I love the way these are translated - in answer to the Foreward, yes, you captured the 'voices' of the original story-tellers who shared their folk tales w/ the Grimms, I'm sure. And I also love the art by Varley - lively, crisp, and the animals are unclothed.
Many stories are more like fables. Some might feel dated to some families. But I enjoyed them now and would have done so even more when I was a child... and I would love to share them with a child.
Many stories are more like fables. Some might feel dated to some families. But I enjoyed them now and would have done so even more when I was a child... and I would love to share them with a child.
March 12, 2022
This is a really short story that rejects arrogance and praises modesty. The fox insulted the cat and exulted in his own abilities which could not save him in the end. He could have learned some things from the cat.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 3, 2018
You with
your hundred arts are left in the lurch! Had you been able to
climb like me, you would not have lost your life.
your hundred arts are left in the lurch! Had you been able to
climb like me, you would not have lost your life.
November 3, 2018
Moral of the story... don't be arrogant? Or is it that being a jack of all trades is a master of none? Who knows. I'm unsure what I just read.
February 13, 2019
A continuation of the same and similar theme of ‘The fox and the......’. Showing the same, similar and different facets of a cunning and conniving fox.
June 1, 2021
Jack of all trades, but master of none.
January 4, 2023
I like the lesson that just because you don't know much doesn't mean you know nothing. Sometimes it also takes wisdom too.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 31, 2024
Don’t be arrogant or you’ll get ripped to shreds by dogs.
January 9, 2025
Fox not nearly as clever as we've been told or nearly that of the common cat... or is it the cat which brought the dogs to humble the fox?
September 23, 2014
I've only read The Fox and the Cat
March 7, 2019
✒️Published in 1812.
This was a simple short fairy tale about arrogance that was cute.
This was a simple short fairy tale about arrogance that was cute.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews