Happy travels to everyone traveling to the Friends of Freddy convention this weekend. We hope you're enjoying the new paperback versions of the Freddy the Pig books as much as we are--and here are some other fans as well!
From The Oregonian:
"This delightful series for children of all ages was written between 1927-58 by Brooks, a staff writer for The New Yorker, and has been brought back in print by The Overlook Press. Freddy the Politician and Freddy and the Bean Home News are key books in the series and as fun and relevant today as when they were first published. In Freddy the Politician, compared favorably to George Orwell's 1984 by critics, Freddy helps his friend Mrs. Wiggins the cow get elected president of the First Animal Republic and stops some woodpeckers from taking over the farm. In Freddy and the Bean Home News, the animals start their own newspaper because the one run by humans isn't printing the truth.”
And from the Children's Book Almanac, which celebrated the Freddy books on Walter Brooks' birthday this January 9:
“All of these books prove that animal fantasy, with just the right amount of humor, can entertain adults and children in equal measure. Brooks brought American homespun humor and a profound understanding of children to his books.”
Many Overlook fans are familiar with our company because of Walter R. Brooks. We published a biography of the great writer a few years ago, called Talking Animals and Others: The Life and Work of Walter R. Brooks, and we recently published his beloved Freddy the Pig novels for the first time in paperback.
He's been a great cultural influence (he inspired the character of Mr. Ed, too!) and in honor of his birthday, we're giving away a copy of FREDDY THE DETECTIVE. Leave a comment here or on Facebook or Twitter to win!
Happy reading! Hug a talking animal today in honor of Walter R. Brooks.
Sherie Posesorski of The Globe and Mail in Toronto pays tribute to Freddy the Pig: "When New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof listed "the best kids' books ever," I was thrilled to see that my very, very favourite book series as a child - the 26 Freddy the Pig books, written by Walter R. Brooks from 1927 to 1958 - were Kristofs "very favourites" too, "funny, beautifully written gems." The series centred on the comic adventures of a talking pig and his equally chatty animal friends, living on a farm in upstate New York, owned by the only miser with words in the series, Mr. Bean, who was proud yet slightly embarrassed that his animals could talk. And could they talk! Their acerbic, witty, shrewd conversation is as fast-mouthed and sharply funny as the Marx Brothers', as aphoristic and gimlet-eyed astute as Noel Coward's, and yet always affectionate and forgiving. Unlike many series which, over time, become forced and formulaic, the Freddy books got better book by book; the characterization of Freddy and his farm-animal friends richer - a persuasive blend of animal and human nature; the writing and adventurous storylines ever more amusing, clever and keenly satirical.
Freddy's fans over the decades include literary heavyweight Lionel Trilling, who described the series as "delightful," Lionel Gelber prizewinning journalist Adam Hochschild (King Leopold's Ghost) who has called Freddy, "that paragon of porkers ... a Renaissance pig" and Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels, who acquired the movie rights. All the accolades, devoted fans and steady sales did not prevent the series from going out of print. It took the efforts of Toronto playwright Dave Carley, who founded the
Friends of Freddy in 1984, to give the series the attention and profile that would bring it back into print. As fortunate Freddy readers would have it, the series turned out to be the favourite as well of former Penguin Books CEO Peter Mayer. Calling Freddy "one of the great figures in American children's literature," as publisher of Overlook Press, he bought the rights and the books are now available in facsimile hardcover reprints and trade paperbacks - which reproduce the mischievous, delectably unforgettable black and white illustrations of Kurt Wiese. The best introduction to the series is
Freddy the Detective. And where to go from there? Every Freddy fan has favourites. . . I grew up on the Freddy books, and I wanted to be like Freddy when I grew up, to be up to any challenge despite my many fears and insecurities. I wanted to have a life like his, full of possibility and adventure and surrounded by a circle of encouraging friends who knew me through and through, as I did them, providing an affectionate dose of needed reality - and rescue, too, whenever necessary. Together, we could face anything, even ignormuses and power crazed woodpeckers!"
Nick Kristoff, Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times, offers his opinion on The Best Kids’ Books Ever:
So how will your kids spend this summer? Building sand castles at the beach? Swimming at summer camp? Shedding I.Q. points?
In educating myself this spring about education, I was aghast to learn that American children drop in I.Q. each summer vacation — because they aren’t in school or exercising their brains.
This is less true of middle-class students whose parents drag them off to summer classes or make them read books. But poor kids fall two months behind in reading level each summer break, and that accounts for much of the difference in learning trajectory between rich and poor students.
A mountain of research points to a central lesson: Pry your kids away from the keyboard and the television this summer, and get them reading. Let me help by offering my list of the Best Children’s Books — Ever!
So here they are, in ascending order of difficulty, and I can vouch that these are also great to read aloud.
1. “Charlotte’s Web.” The story of the spider who saves her friend, the pig, is the kindest representation of an arthropod in literary history.
2. The Hardy Boys series. Yes, I hear the snickers. But I devoured them myself and have known so many kids for whom these were the books that got them excited about reading. The first in the series is weak, but “House on the Cliff” is a good opener. (As for Nancy Drew, I yawned over her, but she seems to turn girls into Supreme Court justices. Among her fans as kids were Sandra Day O’Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor.)
3. “Wind in the Willows.” My mother read this 101-year-old English classic to me, and I’m still in love with the characters. Most memorable of all is Toad — rich, vain, childish and prone to wrecking cars.
4.
The Freddy the Pig series. Published between 1927 and 1958, these 26 books are funny, beautifully written gems. They concern a talking pig, Freddy, who is lazy, messy and sometimes fearful, yet a loyal friend, a first-rate detective and an impressive poet. These were my very favorite books when I was in elementary school. A good one to start with is “
Freddy the Detective” or “
Freddy Plays Football.” (Avoid the first and weakest, “Freddy Goes to Florida.”)
5. The Alex Rider series. These are modern British spy thrillers in which things keep exploding in a very satisfying way. Alex amounts to a teenage James Bond for the 21st century.
Booklist offers a preview of Talking Animals and Others: The Life and Work of Walter R. Brooks, a new biography that will be of great interest to the fans of Freddy the Pig and anyone interested in the history of children's literature:"Cart, whose lifelong love of the Freddy the Pig books is well know in the children's book circles, has thoroughly researched the life of Walter R. Brooks, Freddy's creator, and chronicles it clearly and objectively. His solid knowledge of Brooks' writing is enhanced by his numerous interviews with people who knew Brooks well and by his thoughtful analysis of the man. Readers familiar with Brooks only as a writer of children's books may be surprised to learn that during the same years when Freddy's imaginative adventures were appearing (1927-58), Brooks was publishing witty, urbane short stories in magazines such as Esquire, Argosy, and Atlantic Monthly. Also, he created the talking-horse character later popularized by TV series Mister Ed. The book's black-and-white photos offer glimpses of Brooks and his world. Extensive commentary on the Freddy books, lengthy lists of Brooks' other stories and novels, and chapter-by-chapter source notes conclude this informative and thoroughly readable introduction to Brooks' life and works." –Carolyn Phelan
