When New York 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 Kristof's “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.
Not that I was aware of that when I first fell in love with the Freddy books. I was a devourer of book series, first attracted to Freddy because he was a detective, just like Nancy Drew. But that was where the similarity began and ended. I liked the puzzles of the Nancy Drew mysteries, but Nancy – that was another matter. She seemed too good to be true, not like any person I knew, with her jaunty self-confidence and invincibility. She was “too perfect,” as U.S. mystery writer Laura Lippman has said. She had one trait, good girl, and one role, detective.
Walter R. Brooks with some of his fans
Freddy, however, was all too human. I could identify with him from the first Freddy book I read, Freddy the Detective (1932). Inspired by his reading of Sherlock Holmes, he opens a detective agency with Mrs. Wiggins, the cow, as his partner, “he supplying the ideas and she the common sense,” to solve a series of crimes on the farm, hiring the farm rabbits as operatives (in later books, they become the farm's standing or, more accurately, hopping, army.) No super-heroics here or ever; Freddy tracks down the culprits with his characteristic practical, problem-solving persistence and ingenuity.
But it's not easy, not by a long shot, and it never is for Freddy. By nature, he tends to be lazy and easily scared, and plagued by doubts and insecurities. Freddy likes sleeping and eating too much; he is perennially concerned about his weight, especially when squeezing into disguises that never quite fit. No matter the disguise, as Jinx the black cat dryly says, they never “hide the most important fact about you. … That you're a pig.” He is a romantic daydreamer. “I'm just full of romance inside,” Freddy says with a sigh, and Jinx, giving him the once-over, quips, “There must be a lot of it, all right.”
Freddy is a devoted reader and writer of poetry, and given to getting carried away by his vanity and grandiose fancies about his abilities, which inevitably are deflated by self-awareness, often brought down upon him by his friends – who would do anything for Freddy, as he would likewise do for them. Freddy is as loyal, good-natured, sympathetic, kind-hearted and generous-spirited a soul you could find.
