The Freddy Anniversary Collection: Freddy Goes to Florida/Freddy Goes to the North Pole/Freddy the Detective

My 5th grade boy couldn't seem to get as interested in reading as his older borther was at the same age. He disliked all of the many, many books we have from when his older brother was that age. His older brother liked conflict type books like Jacques' Redwall series where there always seemed to be some grand battle brewing between good and evil. The younger one is much gentler and avoids conflict and dark books like the Harry Potter series. Finally, I found that he likes the same Freddy the Pig stories that I so tremendously enjoyed reading when I was his age. There is no fighting although there is adventure and a gentle page-turning plot of "what will come next". To my surprise I find these are much better than the more recent books intended for his age group so I guess he just has good taste. I read them to him at bedtime and he reads them on his own at other times. The earlier stories are almost 80 years old but they don't seem at all dated. Each book has a main plot with lots of little sub-plots running though them just like an adult novel. Once you accept pigs, cats, mice, etc, talking and interacting with humans everything seems perfectly reasonable. Interesting and fun - highest recommendation.

Brooks wrote the Freddy series between 1927 and 1958. They combine superb character development, unbelievable educational content, and generally mesmerizing entertainment. They are appropriate for reading to children as young as five or six, and make excellent readers for children from nine to as old as early teens. If you read Freddy to very young children, expect to leave out some slower-moving segments and provide lots of side explanations. The good news is that these books can make your kids WANT to know more about judges and juries, bond and bail, the electoral process, World War II, banking, newspaper publishing, geography, ... I could go on and on. The vocabulary-building value is also enormous: words like "constituents" and "torrid" are sprinkled in throughout. If you look at the membership of the Friends of Freddy organization, you'll find it is predominantly male. I think that's because of the book titles, not the content. My second grade daughter looks forward to my reading Freddy every night. She has named toys after Brooks' characters. Brooks handles the characters and their relationships so deftly that literary experts have suggested that these works actually inspired Orwell's Animal Farm. Oh, and the president of the First Animal Republic was a female. Before Overlook republished the entire series, some rarer titles were bringing as high as $200 each. That fact aside, this combination of the first three titles in a single volume is a terrific bargain. I would argue that Freddy Goes to Florida and Freddy the Detective are the two best books of the 26 book series anyway. In this age of unlimited access to Disney DVDs and slam-bam, in-your-face video games, the Freddy series just might be your kids' ticket back to calmer, more thoughtful, and much more valuable entertainment. But be warned: you may find your fifth grader reading under his blankets with a flashlight long after he's supposed to be asleep. It happened to my parents when I was in the fifth grade.

I must have been about 7 years old when I found my first Freddy book at the local library. After that first one, I found and read them all. Freddy, and especially Jinx the cat, made me laugh out loud. As an adult, I've often looked for- but never found- the Freddy books, and mentioned them to other readers but only received blank looks in return. It's wonderful to see that the Freddy books are reprinted and back in circulation. I plan to buy them all and give them to nieces and nephews and my cousins' grandchildren...after I've re-read them, of course. I'm sure that the 50 years between readings have not dimmed the books' luster.

The only thing I didn't like about this 3-book collection was the difficulty in finding a good stopping place after my voice needed a break from reading it aloud to my kids--they always begged for "just one more chapter!" No crude language or gross-out humor here, as is the norm for many contemporary books published for kids. Instead, you'll find a sweet cast of well-drawn characters such as Charles the Rooster, the cow sisters, Mr. and Mrs Webb (a spider couple), Jinx the cat, and of course the title character, Freddy, who really begins to come into his own in the second book. The books have a similar flavor and feel to the original Winnie-the-Pooh stories, and are enhanced by the simple but effective line drawings created by Kurt Weise.Stylistically speaking, these early works in the series can have somewhat bumpy plots, but Mr. Brooks' charm and his gentle social commentary more than make up for this. After we finished this collection of stories, my kids wanted to hear more about Freddy and his pals.

It was fifty years ago when I read the Freddy series, and they have left an indelible impression on me. As a child, I read all of the Freddy books that were available to me and enjoyed them immensely. When reading the books, I became completely immersed in Freddy's world of adventure. I would recommend this series to any child and plan to purchase them for my grandchildren.