Rereading: FREDDY AND THE DRAGON by Walter R. Brooks

The 26th and final book of the Freddy series is just as entertaining as the rest. (I didn’t reread “The Collected Poems of Freddy the Pig,” all the others are on my Book Reviews page.)

Freddy and Jinx and their mounts Cy and Bill have returned from their vacation tour of New England to find a new crime wave in Centerboro with animals as suspects, including Freddy himself. Freddy’s friends know he’s not involved, but others want him arrested. Windows are being broken, gardens and property ravaged, and notes have been delivered to some home and business owners demanding protection money if they don’t want the same treatment. Money is to be left on the road between the Bean Farm woods and the Big Woods, behind the Bean Farm.

Freddy and Jinx decide to spy on the collection of some of that money, and are startled and frightened to see it being picked up by a headless horseman carrying his head on the saddle horn of his horse. The state troopers are equally frightened by this, and are unable to make an arrest. Some of the tough animals that threatened the area during the attempted coup by Simon the Rat are being identified as culprits, and one of them, Percy the Bull, shows up at the Bean farm to make trouble. He turns out to be the father of Bean cows Mrs. Wiggins and her sisters, but is rude to them, and everyone. Freddy and friends manage to capture the bull, and Freddy sets his new mole friend Samuel on the job of being Percy’s unseen conscience to try to turn him around.

In another plotline, Jimmy, the boy Freddy helped once before with a neighborhood circus, is back asking for more help to raise money for his baseball team. Freddy and Uncle Ben come up with a dragon costume to be worn by Freddy, Jinx and the Bean dog Robert. The dragon is realistic and can breathe fire and smoke. Just the thing for the show, if Freddy can avoid being arrested before it goes on.

My copy of this book is a later printing and includes a bio for Brooks that I don’t think was in earlier ones. I found it interesting and copy it here:

Walter R. Brooks, author of the famous Freddy the pig stories, was born in Rome, New York. He attended the University of Rochester where he planned to study medicine. He prepared for medical college, but gave it up after a year, substituting the typewriter for the stethescope. He did advertising and editorial work, and was with the American Red Cross for a number of years. He was also with the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. One of his hobbies was learning new languages every two or three years.

For many years Mr. Brooks lived in New York City, on celebrated Washington Square. Then he decided to move to the country. He lived for many years in Roxbury, Delaware County, New York, where he wrote many of the stories about Freddy and his Bean Farm friends for an ever-increasing audience of boys and girls.

Brooks also wrote stories for magazines, including a series about a talking horse that was the inspiration for the TV show “Mr. Ed.” All the Freddy books are fun to read and recommended.

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