Freddy Goes Camping

Definitely not one of the strongest Freddy books. Too many implausibilities.

For example, a spy just happens to get a chance to listen when the topic of the conversation just happens to be about all sorts of plans?

And this Aunt Elmira character, do you know anyone like her? I sure don't. I know chronic whiners, people full of self-pity, but they wouldn't react the way Elmira did to Freddy's 'treatment."

Speaking of which, I love that Brooks makes it clear in every book that Freddy relies on his wide circle of friends, both human and animal. Everyone from a wasp or spider to a cow or bear or jeweler contributes to the success of Freddy's schemes.

"A whisper carries farther on a still night than if you just speak low."

"If you like show more something, or want something, or are afraid of something yourself, you are pretty apt to think that everybody else in the world likes or wants or is afraid of the same thing. You like poetry, and so you think everybody else does too." show less

Walter R. Brooks' "Freddy" series has been charming readers since the 1930s. Most agree that Brooks hit his stride in the 1940s. Set in upstate New York, the series follows the adventures of Freddy, a pig, and the other animals of the Bean farm. Freddy is a pig extraordinaire-- poet, newspaper editor, football player, and detective. In this outing, he goes undercover to again foil his nemesis, Herbert Garble.

These were among my favorite books when I was a child, and it was thanks to Knopf's practice of appending a colophon at the end of the books it published that I first began paying attention to type (Baskerville, in this case). I have been revisiting the Bean farm over the past couple of years. Brooks' gentle satire holds up well, show more and when reading them these days, I "hear" them mentally in Garrison Keillor's voice. show less

Camphor tells Freddy about an abandoned summer hotel and the unfriendly ghosts that live there, Freddy smells a rat-Simon the rat. Determined to find out just what his old enemy is up to, Freddy needs the perfect cover-up: camping! So Freddy packs up the sleeping bags, tents, and frying pans and heads out to the woods to expose Simon's scheme. But when the evil Mr. Eha starts skulking about, Freddy and his pals know that they'll have to do some serious detecting to get to the bottom of the mystery.

While many of the books in the Freddy series could take place anywhere in the rural United States, some of them benefit more strongly from their upstate New York setting. This is one of them. The Adirondacks are a perfect place for a pig to go camping, especially when he's a detective going undercover.