Free
A Mister Fox Mystery
Mister Fox and the Secret of the Old Desk
A stuck drawer, a crumpled newspaper and a message in invisible ink: the secret that finally lets Amberville build its bridge.
Read free ✦Illustrated storybooks · ages 3–9
Small clues.
Big adventures.
Original picture books from Amberville Hollow, where a curious fox and his very clever snail solve the town's problems by noticing what everyone else overlooks. For children 3–9 and the grown-ups who read with them.
- No ads
- No accounts
- No streaks
- iPhone & iPad
Meet the hero
A fox who notices
Mister Sofus Fox reads everything within reach of his eyes. Signs. Labels. Posters. Menus. Even the writing on the bottom of teacups.
He collects rare stamps, plays classical records to his cactus and keeps particularly useful scraps of paper. He is not a hero, exactly. He is something better: a fox who pays attention.
And a snail who is usually right
Bertie, his pet snail, never says a word. He taps. He nudges. He points with his eye stalks. He is usually first to spot the clue.
“Bertie possesses exceptional intelligence,” he often explained. “And he is considerably better-looking than some of my colleagues.”
The library
Stories on the shelf
Read them in any order. The first one is free, for keeps.
Free
A Mister Fox Adventure
Mister Fox's Incredible Experiments
A formula down the drain, a frog the size of a hill and a snail as big as a house. A comic science story about owning your mistakes.
See it in the app
Soon
A Fox Family Story
The Lilac Mist
Pancakes keep vanishing from the Fox house. The children set a trap of flour — and find a tiny lost kit asleep in the cupboard.
Tell me when it's outA taste of the first story
Everyone expected treasure
The whole Fox family was sure the stuck drawer held a treasure map, gold coins, a tiny antique doll. Out came one crumpled piece of old newspaper. Nothing else.
Only Mister Fox kept it. And when a warm iron passed over the paper, something began to appear…
BRIDGE COLLAPSES AGAIN
Builders have once more failed to complete the long-awaited bridge across the river. Strong currents destroyed half the structure. Town officials continue to seek a solution.
JUST ADD EGGS.
Just add eggs… to what? The answer arrives at breakfast.
Every page a picture
Beautiful on every page
Every illustration is made in one hand-printed style: flat gouache colour, linocut grain, a little print misregistration and warm cream paper — the look of the mid-century storybooks many of us grew up with.
Read together
Stories grown-ups enjoy reading aloud
Short sentences. Exact, funny details. A narrator who stays perfectly composed while a frog the size of a hill sits in the river. The jokes land twice: once for the child, once for you.
“Pictures for bees, poetry for oysters — I endured all that,” Grandpa Basil said. “But a concert for a cactus is too much!”
Each story is built on clues planted early and paid off later, on mistakes owned and put right, and on a town that helps. There is always something to talk about after the last page.
For grown-ups
A calm, safe place
The quietest screen in the house. Nothing to click away to, and nothing sold to your child.
No ads. Ever.
No banners, no videos, no “sponsored” anything.
No accounts, chat or sharing
There is nowhere to type and no one to talk to.
No points, streaks or timers
A gentle sparkle for a bookmark. That's all.
A grown-ups' gate
Every purchase asks a grown-up question first.
Mister Fox does the talking
Every message arrives in his speech balloon — never a pop-up.
Nothing to lose
The app remembers the page and the bookmark, and reads offline once a book is on the device.
Designed for ages 3–9
Made for small hands
- One decision per screen: pick a book, read, turn the page.
- Big, easy buttons — every one larger than Apple's minimum.
- On iPad, picture and story sit side by side like an open book.
- On iPhone, the art fills the top and the words sit below.
- Larger text sizes and VoiceOver are supported.
Simple pricing
The first book is free. For keeps.
Every other book is a single one-time purchase — about the price of a coffee — and stays yours on all your devices. No subscription.
For teachers & librarians
Read-alouds with something to talk about
Each Amberville story runs on cause and effect: a clue planted early pays off later, a mistake has consequences, and the answer comes from something the reader has already seen. That makes them natural for prediction, sequencing and “how did they know?” discussions.
Ad-free and account-free, so it is safe on a classroom iPad.
Ask for the classroom packQuestions
Asked by grown-ups
What ages is it for?
Children 3–9. Younger children enjoy the pictures and being read to; 6–9 year olds can read many pages on their own.
Is it really free?
The first book, Mister Fox and the Secret of the Old Desk, is free and built into the app. Further books are one-time purchases.
Is there a subscription?
No.
Are there ads or links out of the app?
No ads, no links out of the app, no sharing buttons and no chat.
Does it need an account?
No.
Does it work offline?
Yes, once a book is on the device.
Does the app read the story aloud?
Not yet. The stories are written to be read aloud by you — that is half the fun.
iPhone or iPad?
Both. On iPad the picture and the story sit side by side in landscape.
What data do you collect?
Before keeping any record of reading, Mister Fox asks a grown-up whether he may keep his “small notebook” of which pages are read. It is used only to make the books better.