![]() My rating: 4 of 5 stars Freddy Goes Camping (and Sleuthing and Ghost Busting) “Hey, I’ve got an idea,” said Mr. Camphor. “He wouldn’t suspect campers. I’ve got a complete camping outfit—tent, sleeping bags, everything. What do you say we go camping?” Freddy thought it wasn’t a bad idea. “But are you sure you want to go yourself? It may be dangerous.” “Danger is the spice of life,” said Mr. Camphor, and Bannister said: “Faint heart ne’er won fair lady.” “Don’t be silly, Bannister,” Mr. Camphor said. “I don’t want any fair lady; I want to have some fun. Anyway, we’ve got two aunts here—isn’t that enough fair ladies for one summer?” ![]() The local rich man Mr. Camphor has asked his friend Freddy the pig (poet, editor, banker, detective, editor, etc.) to help rescue him from his gloomy Aunt Elmira and domineering Aunt Minerva. The maiden aunts have moved in with Mr. Camphor for the summer because a vandalizing ghost has closed Mrs. Filmore’s hotel where they usually vacation. Not (quite) believing in ghosts, Mr. Camphor asks Freddy to find out (in his capacity as detective) what’s going on in the hotel and stop the haunting so the aunts can be moved there where they belong. Thus, Mr. Camphor and Freddy (disguised as a doctor) are soon posing as campers to avoid looking like investigators to avoid spooking (!) the ghost. Meanwhile, a jittery chipmunk is trying to sell info on the whereabouts of the unctuous Simon the rat and his thieving, vandalizing clan. Freddy is unconcerned about the rats until he learns that the mysterious Mr. Eha has hired them to do some dirty work and is holding Simon’s unpleasant son Ezra as a hostage to ensure the rats’ compliance (is Brooks indulging in antisemitic tropes by giving the rats Hebrew names? Luckily, there is something appealing in their brazen, disrespectful chutzpah). Will Freddy be able to solve the spectral mystery (while reminding himself that there are no such things as ghosts while dreading meeting this one) so as to save the hotel for Mrs. Filmore? Will the cow Mrs. Wiggins’ advice about how to treat Aunt Minerva and the rooster Charles’ strategy for treating Aunt Elmira actually work? Will Freddy compose more absurd and clever poems? Will he learn how to paddle a canoe? ![]() Freddy does have fun camping, at first, as Mr. Camphor teaches him to completely prepare before undertaking any task like making a fire and how to flip flapjacks over hot charcoal in the great outdoors (which sure seems like great fun!). As usual in Freddy books, you can spot the villains a mile away (any person who dislikes and abuses animals), and it’s satisfying to see them get their comeuppances. And Brooks does make you want to treat creatures well, as when Mrs. Bean painstakingly removes some buckshot from the body of the unappreciative Simon. As usual in Freddy books, the pig is a mixture of flaws and virtues, clever moves and absurd mistakes, cowardice and bravery, poetry and slapstick. One moment he’s cross-dressing while crashing a wedding party or ending up back home at the Bean farm after boasting that he could find the Macy farm blindfolded, the next he’s marshalling and organizing insects and animals into the Committee for Animal Defence to protect the Bean farm or boldly playing doctor to invade the scary Mr. Anderson’s house. As usual in Freddy books, Brooks enjoys writing a wide range of registers, from Charles the rooster’s high-flown rhetoric (“Madam… only the anticipation of seeing you again so soon could have induced us to brave the inclemency of the elements”) to Jinx the black cat’s slang (“Aw, choke it off, will you… If she wasn’t so handy with a hatchet, do you think I’d let her make a monkey out of me like this?”) As usual in Freddy books, there are plenty of amusing animal “facts,” like: --“Pigs are full of ideas, but cows are full of common sense, and when you get that combination to work on a problem it’s pretty near unbeatable.” --“Freddy thought Jacob was joking, but it was hard to tell, for wasps only have one expression on their faces, and even that one doesn’t express anything.” As usual in Freddy books, there is plenty of wisdom about human nature, like: --“Now when people say they want an honest opinion about something they’ve done, they probably mean it all right, but if it isn’t a favorable opinion, they’re apt to get mad.” --“But being nice to people—well, I guess it’s giving them what they want, instead of what we think they ought to want.” As usual in Freddy books, there are plenty of humorous touches that must fly right over the heads of kids while cracking up adults, like: --“Freddy had a pet ant once,” said Mrs. Wiggins. “His name was Jerry. He could read and write.” --“She was a tall nice-looking woman with a worried expression on her face and a pistol in her hand.” The novel is a product of its time, the late 1940s. At one point the villain buys some DDT, causing Freddy some concern for his insect allies, and there is some politically incorrect (for today) “humor” regarding African witch doctors and Indian war cries. By the way, I had assumed that “ghost busting” was a term coined for the first Ghost Busters movie or thereabouts, but Freddy (in 1948) says, “But my goodness, we’re detectives, not ghost busters.” There is a weird moment when Mr. Camphor fries some bacon while camping with Freddy, with neither pig nor narrator commenting about it. (view spoiler)[Apart from the resolution of the Aunt Problem, which is neat, the novel has a disappointing conclusion. Simon and his rats turn out to have been basically unnecessary for the plot, while being too conveniently left free to cause trouble in future books. The villain Mr. Anderson is so plagued by Freddy’s animal and insect allies that he becomes unable to function, and it seems an overly easy way to eal with him. (hide spoiler)] Hey, it’s a fun book! But why not start with earlier ones in the series like Freddy the Politician or Freddy and the Popinjay?</["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]></["br"]> View all my reviews
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Jefferson Peters
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by Sabaa Tahir
A Young Adult Epic Fantasy with Lots of Violence & Romance
Elias is an elite Martial soldier, Laia a naïve Scholar slave. As they alternate telling their stories (in trendy Young Adult first person, present tense narration), we soon rea...
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"It must be due to some fault in ourselves"--
George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945) is an anti-totalitarian-communist allegory in which the exploited animals of the Manor Farm kick Farmer Jones out and set about running the farm. At first...
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by Lu Xun
Perfect Stories of Life in Early 20th Century China
Chinese Classic Stories (1998) by Xun Lu is an excellent collection of seven short stories by perhaps the most important 20th century Chinese writer of fiction. Lu Xun (1881-1936) stu...
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Fine Writing, Great Characters, Immersive World
The Surgeon's Mate (1980) is the 7th novel in Patrick O'Brian's addicting series of age of sail novels about the lives, loves, and careers of the British navy captain Jack Aubrey and the ...
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An Overwritten, Oddly Compelling Gothic Father
Matthew Lewis' notorious and influential Gothic novel The Monk (1796) takes place during the heyday of the Spanish Inquisition. Ambrosio, the monk/friar/abbot/idol of Madrid, is nicknamed ...
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My Fukuoka University