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Freddy the Pig #9
Freddy and the Perilous Adventure
A ballooning mishap sends Freddy the pig and some animal friends on a cross-country chase, on the trail of a blackmailing scheme, and into the prizefight ring.
245 pages, Hardcover
First published March 12, 1942
About the author
Walter Rollin Brooks
62 books69 followersWalter Rollin Brooks (January 9, 1886 – August 17, 1958) was an American writer best remembered for his short stories and children's books, particularly those about Freddy the Pig and other anthropomorphic animal inhabitants of the "Bean farm" in upstate New York.
Born in Rome, New York, Brooks attended college at the University of Rochester and subsequently studied homeopathic medicine in New York City. He dropped out after two years, however, and returned to Rochester, where he married his first wife, Anne Shepard, in 1909. Brooks found employment with an advertising agency in Utica, and then "retired" in 1911, evidently because he came into a considerable inheritance. His retirement was not permanent: in 1917, he went to work for the American Red Cross and later did editorial work for several magazines, including The New Yorker.
In 1940, Brooks turned to his own writing for his full-time occupation. Walter married his second wife, Dorothy Collins, following the death of Anne in 1952.
The first works Brooks published were poems and short stories. His short story "Ed Takes the Pledge" about a talking horse was the basis for the 1960s television comedy series Mister Ed (credit for creating the characters is given in each episode to "Walter Brooks"). His most enduring works, however, are the 26 books he wrote about Freddy the Pig and his friends.
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Born in Rome, New York, Brooks attended college at the University of Rochester and subsequently studied homeopathic medicine in New York City. He dropped out after two years, however, and returned to Rochester, where he married his first wife, Anne Shepard, in 1909. Brooks found employment with an advertising agency in Utica, and then "retired" in 1911, evidently because he came into a considerable inheritance. His retirement was not permanent: in 1917, he went to work for the American Red Cross and later did editorial work for several magazines, including The New Yorker.
In 1940, Brooks turned to his own writing for his full-time occupation. Walter married his second wife, Dorothy Collins, following the death of Anne in 1952.
The first works Brooks published were poems and short stories. His short story "Ed Takes the Pledge" about a talking horse was the basis for the 1960s television comedy series Mister Ed (credit for creating the characters is given in each episode to "Walter Brooks"). His most enduring works, however, are the 26 books he wrote about Freddy the Pig and his friends.
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
July 21, 2016
As anyone who reads my feed knows, this is one of my favorite book series as a kid.
Reading these is like bringing back a portion of my childhood, and I have yet to find a book in the series that doesn't hold up to my re-reading.
I'll be sad when I've run thru the entire line, but I still have a ways to go yet!
Reading these is like bringing back a portion of my childhood, and I have yet to find a book in the series that doesn't hold up to my re-reading.
I'll be sad when I've run thru the entire line, but I still have a ways to go yet!
September 30, 2010
I can't believe I'd never heard of this series!!I happened to stumble upon it while browsing through my local library and was enchanted! The writing was humorous enough to keep me laughing, and interesting enough to keep my 6-year-old begging me to read more. Well-crafted words, interesting plot lines, humorous and true-to-life character sketches. With 25 more books in the series, Freddy will be entertaining us for years to come!
May 6, 2022
I read this book aloud to my 6 and 3.5 year old. It was my first Freddy book to read with my eyes—we have listened to audible narrations of several others. We thoroughly enjoyed it! (My 3 yr old was not as enthralled but she’ll get there!). It was fun to see the illustrations as well.
June 6, 2025
When Freddy and the Perilous Adventure (1942), the ninth book in Walter R. Brooks’s Freddy the Pig series, was written, airplanes had existed only a few decades. In the 1940’s, most children would never have seen the surface of the earth from the air. The book’s young readers would identify with the wonder Brooks’s balloon-riding animals experience when they see their home, the Bean Farm, from the air. As a child during the 1940’s, I vividly remember, not only my introduction to the Freddy books, but the colorful pictures of futuristic aircraft in my father’s Popular Mechanics. Perilous and its successors, Freddy the Pilot (1952), Freddy and the Space Ship (1953), and Freddy and the Flying Saucer Plans (1957) convey the early 20th century glorification of technology, as well as that era’s fascination with venturing above the earth.
At the beginning of Freddy and the Perilous Adventure, Alice, one of the Bean Farm’s ducks, admits that she longs for adventure. Freddy tells Alice and her sister Emma about a French duck balloonist he had read about. Alice and Emma might duplicate the French ducks’ heroic achievement, Freddy says, because there will be a balloon ascension at the Centerboro fairgrounds on July 4th. Freddy proposes that the sisters be passengers.
Traveling to the fairgrounds, Freddy tells the shady balloon operator that his balloon launch would be more thrilling with ducks aboard. Golcher counters that he will take the ducks IF Freddy makes a patriotic speech before the launch AND accompanies Emma and Alice on the balloon ride. Believing that Golcher will operate the balloon, Freddy agrees. Golcher, however, sends Freddy, the ducks, and two stowaway spiders up in the balloon alone. As the balloon flies over familiar landmarks, the animals begin to enjoy their adventure—until they discover that the valve which brings the balloon to the ground has malfunctioned. Hungry and frightened, they explain their plight to an eagle. Flying to the Beans, Breckenridge returns with a basket of food.
After the balloon loses air during a thunderstorm, it flies low enough that the animals manage to return to earth. Learning that Golcher has accused him of stealing the balloon, Freddy disguises himself, “borrowing” a ridiculously formal outfit from a scarecrow. Secretly returning to the Bean farm, Freddy overhears Golcher extort $200 from Mr. Bean for the supposed theft.
Freddy seeks help from Mr. Boomschmidt, whose traveling circus is presently in South Pharisee, an imaginary town near Centerboro. Although the circus elephants tow the ballon back to Golcher, he refuses to return Mr. Bean’s money. Determined that Mr. Bean should not pay for his actions, Freddy challenges Golcher to a public wresting match with a $200 purse. Golcher is winning the match until Mr. Webb repeatedly bites him. Freddy, however, publicly admits that Golcher would have won, had not his spider friend intervened. Golcher is so impressed by Freddy’s honesty that he returns Mr. Bean’s money.
Centerboro, where the Bean Farm is located, is in a fictional area in upstate New York, west of Syracuse (my home town) and the Adirondacks. Like Stephen King’s fictional Maine world, Walterbrooksland is governed by its own laws. Within the Bean Farm, Centerboro, and the other deliciously named CNY small towns (e.g., South Pharisee, Clamville, Catawampus, Bounding Brook), animals can talk, and morality triumphs. In Walterbrooksland, humans accept taking animals as a fact of nature, though sometimes grumblingly. The Bean animals perform the farm’s chores with minimal supervision. The elephants, lion, boa constrictor, and other exotic animals of Mr. Boomschmidt’s circus (which tours Central New York every summer) take tickets, put up tents, and visit the homes of locals. In Brooks’s Freddy novels, evildoers often attempt to injure Centerboro’s humans and animals; but by the end of each novel, they are either reformed or expelled. Even the “criminals” in the sheriff’s prelapsarian jail are decent human beings. They have such a good time at the jail’s baseball games, banquets, and taffy pulls (Perilous Adventure) that they commit petty crimes to be readmitted.
Though, of course, Freddy is always the protagonist, each novel foregrounds different animals, who gain depth and moral clarity as the book progresses. In Perilous Adventure, the three ducks—Emma, Alice, and their Uncle Wesley—learn important lessons. After a pleasant but predictable life on the Bean pond, Emma and Alice gain courage and a vision of a wider world. In an earlier book, Uncle Wesley, a pompous braggart, had so tyrannized and demeaned his adoring nieces that the Bean animals had enlisted an eagle to remove him. In Perilous, the balloonists find Wesley at a woodland pond near South Pharisee, selling rotten nuts to squirrels. Back home at the Bean Farm, Wesley assumes that he can resume his bullying. When he discovers that his nieces have learned to assert themselves, Wesley gains moral insight into his habitual behavior. Wesley admits that he had bossed Emma and Alice around because “‘I’ve always been scared of them. . . . ’” Wesley tells his nieces.: ‘My dears. . . I would like to come back and live with you, if you want me. And I’ll do what you say. Why I think maybe I’ll have a pretty good time!’” (243). Wesley is one of several Perillous humans and animals who experience an ethical conversion.
Like the other 26 Freddy books (1927-1959), and, indeed, contemporary young adult books, Freddy and the Perilous Adventure is didactic, overtly imparting moral lessons to child readers. In the Freddy books, small animals (who stand in for small people) are empowered, prevailing against larger adversaries. In Perilous, the parachuting mice delight the audience at Mr. Boomschmidt’s balloon ascension, and Mr. Webb’s attack on Golcher leads to his return of Mr. Bean’s money. In the Freddy books, as in Dr. Seuss’s poetry, “A person’s a person no matter how small.”
By the end of Perilous, animals and humans have learned important life lessons. Uncle
Wesley learns humility. The balloon-operating grifter, Golcher, learns that honesty is his best choice. In Perilous’s delicious finale, a gang of bullies get their comeuppance. Jimmy, a child who had attended Boomschmidt’s Colossal and Unparalleled Circus, decides to stage his own circus, using his his own and his friends’ pets. When a gang of older boys try to break up Jimmy’s circus by staging a ”lion hunt,” the real circus animals emerge and terrify the bullies. Mr. Boomschmidt reinforces the book’s lesson about bullying: “You know what it is like now to be helpless. I’ll hope you’ll remember it” (235). Like Uncle Wesley, the would-be lion hunters promise to reform.
Endearing characters and Brooks’s delight in language save Perilous from seeming heavy-handedly moralistic. One hilarious episode, too long to quote in full, is the meeting between the eagle Breckenridge and the stranded balloonists. Remembering that since “eagles . . .are the national bird,” they “have a great sense of their own dignity, and feel that just ordinary talk is beneath them,” Freddy implores “monarch of the skies”: “We know not where we are, nor whither we are bound, nor are we provided with the wherewithal to sustain life on this problematical and involuntary journey” (52). Familiar with Freddy’s poetry, Breckenridge attempts to recites a poem celebrating eagles, written five years ago. When Breckenridge garbles passages (Thy claws of steel, thy beak of burnished brass/ Make malefactor pigs chew up the grass), Freddy corrects him with the` highflown, equally silly original lines (Thy claws of brass, thy beak or burnished steel/ Make malefactor pigs in terror squeal) (55). Another deliciously comic moment in Perilous is Jimmy’s description of the animals in his make-believe circus. “‘We have here,’ he said, stopping before crate in which Pete, his fox terrier, was confined, ‘a genuine African Wampus, the only one in captivity. He has a head like an alligator and claws and a mane like a lion, and he lives exclusively on uncles and aunts” (231). Perilous is is a funny, exuberant, deeply moral book.
I read Freddy and the Perilous Adventure several years ago as part of a marathon rereading of books I had loved as a child. It was not until a recent Zoom discussion of the book with the Friends of Freddy, however, that I realized that Perilous is one of the gems of the Freddy series. My thanks to members of this discussion for sharing their invaluable insights and calling my attention to a book I had overlooked!
At the beginning of Freddy and the Perilous Adventure, Alice, one of the Bean Farm’s ducks, admits that she longs for adventure. Freddy tells Alice and her sister Emma about a French duck balloonist he had read about. Alice and Emma might duplicate the French ducks’ heroic achievement, Freddy says, because there will be a balloon ascension at the Centerboro fairgrounds on July 4th. Freddy proposes that the sisters be passengers.
Traveling to the fairgrounds, Freddy tells the shady balloon operator that his balloon launch would be more thrilling with ducks aboard. Golcher counters that he will take the ducks IF Freddy makes a patriotic speech before the launch AND accompanies Emma and Alice on the balloon ride. Believing that Golcher will operate the balloon, Freddy agrees. Golcher, however, sends Freddy, the ducks, and two stowaway spiders up in the balloon alone. As the balloon flies over familiar landmarks, the animals begin to enjoy their adventure—until they discover that the valve which brings the balloon to the ground has malfunctioned. Hungry and frightened, they explain their plight to an eagle. Flying to the Beans, Breckenridge returns with a basket of food.
After the balloon loses air during a thunderstorm, it flies low enough that the animals manage to return to earth. Learning that Golcher has accused him of stealing the balloon, Freddy disguises himself, “borrowing” a ridiculously formal outfit from a scarecrow. Secretly returning to the Bean farm, Freddy overhears Golcher extort $200 from Mr. Bean for the supposed theft.
Freddy seeks help from Mr. Boomschmidt, whose traveling circus is presently in South Pharisee, an imaginary town near Centerboro. Although the circus elephants tow the ballon back to Golcher, he refuses to return Mr. Bean’s money. Determined that Mr. Bean should not pay for his actions, Freddy challenges Golcher to a public wresting match with a $200 purse. Golcher is winning the match until Mr. Webb repeatedly bites him. Freddy, however, publicly admits that Golcher would have won, had not his spider friend intervened. Golcher is so impressed by Freddy’s honesty that he returns Mr. Bean’s money.
Centerboro, where the Bean Farm is located, is in a fictional area in upstate New York, west of Syracuse (my home town) and the Adirondacks. Like Stephen King’s fictional Maine world, Walterbrooksland is governed by its own laws. Within the Bean Farm, Centerboro, and the other deliciously named CNY small towns (e.g., South Pharisee, Clamville, Catawampus, Bounding Brook), animals can talk, and morality triumphs. In Walterbrooksland, humans accept taking animals as a fact of nature, though sometimes grumblingly. The Bean animals perform the farm’s chores with minimal supervision. The elephants, lion, boa constrictor, and other exotic animals of Mr. Boomschmidt’s circus (which tours Central New York every summer) take tickets, put up tents, and visit the homes of locals. In Brooks’s Freddy novels, evildoers often attempt to injure Centerboro’s humans and animals; but by the end of each novel, they are either reformed or expelled. Even the “criminals” in the sheriff’s prelapsarian jail are decent human beings. They have such a good time at the jail’s baseball games, banquets, and taffy pulls (Perilous Adventure) that they commit petty crimes to be readmitted.
Though, of course, Freddy is always the protagonist, each novel foregrounds different animals, who gain depth and moral clarity as the book progresses. In Perilous Adventure, the three ducks—Emma, Alice, and their Uncle Wesley—learn important lessons. After a pleasant but predictable life on the Bean pond, Emma and Alice gain courage and a vision of a wider world. In an earlier book, Uncle Wesley, a pompous braggart, had so tyrannized and demeaned his adoring nieces that the Bean animals had enlisted an eagle to remove him. In Perilous, the balloonists find Wesley at a woodland pond near South Pharisee, selling rotten nuts to squirrels. Back home at the Bean Farm, Wesley assumes that he can resume his bullying. When he discovers that his nieces have learned to assert themselves, Wesley gains moral insight into his habitual behavior. Wesley admits that he had bossed Emma and Alice around because “‘I’ve always been scared of them. . . . ’” Wesley tells his nieces.: ‘My dears. . . I would like to come back and live with you, if you want me. And I’ll do what you say. Why I think maybe I’ll have a pretty good time!’” (243). Wesley is one of several Perillous humans and animals who experience an ethical conversion.
Like the other 26 Freddy books (1927-1959), and, indeed, contemporary young adult books, Freddy and the Perilous Adventure is didactic, overtly imparting moral lessons to child readers. In the Freddy books, small animals (who stand in for small people) are empowered, prevailing against larger adversaries. In Perilous, the parachuting mice delight the audience at Mr. Boomschmidt’s balloon ascension, and Mr. Webb’s attack on Golcher leads to his return of Mr. Bean’s money. In the Freddy books, as in Dr. Seuss’s poetry, “A person’s a person no matter how small.”
By the end of Perilous, animals and humans have learned important life lessons. Uncle
Wesley learns humility. The balloon-operating grifter, Golcher, learns that honesty is his best choice. In Perilous’s delicious finale, a gang of bullies get their comeuppance. Jimmy, a child who had attended Boomschmidt’s Colossal and Unparalleled Circus, decides to stage his own circus, using his his own and his friends’ pets. When a gang of older boys try to break up Jimmy’s circus by staging a ”lion hunt,” the real circus animals emerge and terrify the bullies. Mr. Boomschmidt reinforces the book’s lesson about bullying: “You know what it is like now to be helpless. I’ll hope you’ll remember it” (235). Like Uncle Wesley, the would-be lion hunters promise to reform.
Endearing characters and Brooks’s delight in language save Perilous from seeming heavy-handedly moralistic. One hilarious episode, too long to quote in full, is the meeting between the eagle Breckenridge and the stranded balloonists. Remembering that since “eagles . . .are the national bird,” they “have a great sense of their own dignity, and feel that just ordinary talk is beneath them,” Freddy implores “monarch of the skies”: “We know not where we are, nor whither we are bound, nor are we provided with the wherewithal to sustain life on this problematical and involuntary journey” (52). Familiar with Freddy’s poetry, Breckenridge attempts to recites a poem celebrating eagles, written five years ago. When Breckenridge garbles passages (Thy claws of steel, thy beak of burnished brass/ Make malefactor pigs chew up the grass), Freddy corrects him with the` highflown, equally silly original lines (Thy claws of brass, thy beak or burnished steel/ Make malefactor pigs in terror squeal) (55). Another deliciously comic moment in Perilous is Jimmy’s description of the animals in his make-believe circus. “‘We have here,’ he said, stopping before crate in which Pete, his fox terrier, was confined, ‘a genuine African Wampus, the only one in captivity. He has a head like an alligator and claws and a mane like a lion, and he lives exclusively on uncles and aunts” (231). Perilous is is a funny, exuberant, deeply moral book.
I read Freddy and the Perilous Adventure several years ago as part of a marathon rereading of books I had loved as a child. It was not until a recent Zoom discussion of the book with the Friends of Freddy, however, that I realized that Perilous is one of the gems of the Freddy series. My thanks to members of this discussion for sharing their invaluable insights and calling my attention to a book I had overlooked!
October 2, 2018
An Amusing Pro-Animal, Feminist Romp in and below the Blue Empyrean
Freddy and the Perilous Adventure (1942), the 9th entry in Walter R. Brooks' 26-book Freddy the Pig series, is a fun book. It begins when Freddy, clever detective, natural poet, and pig of many disguises and interests, is tricked into going up in a hot air balloon by Mr. Golcher, a sour-faced, thin man of business who refers to himself as "Golcher" and cheats people out of money and then dares them to take him to court. Mr. Golcher tricks Freddy by asking him to make a patriotic speech at a 4th of July event to attract a bigger crowd and then revealing that the pig will (of course) also have to go up in the balloon. Not the bravest of pigs, Freddy reluctantly realizes he can't back out: "Oh dear, I wish I wasn't such a fearless character." There's nothing for it but for him to put on his "intrepid-pig-who-scoffs-at-peril" and his "pig-who-is-about-to-go-up-in-a-balloon-and-thinks-nothing-of-it" expressions and get in the balloon, which is, after all only to go straight up and come straight down after a brief ascension. Moreover, Freddy will be accompanied by the white duck sisters Emma and Alice, who'd like a little adventure, as well as by Mr. and Mrs. Webb, the Bean farm's spider couple, who'd like a new point of view.
Nothing goes as planned. First, just before the pig is called on to make his speech, he chomps on a large piece of pulled candy made by the prisoners of the Centerboro jail, gluing his upper and lower teeth shut, so all he can say is, "Mmmmmmmmmmm," displeasing the crowd (isn't Freddy one of Mr. Bean's famous talking animals?). Second, a tangled valve cord prevents Freddy from bringing the balloon back to earth as scheduled, and when it's blown out of sight Mr. Gulcher accuses him of stealing the thing! The main plot relates the flight of the balloon and Freddy's attempts to avoid being arrested for theft and to clear his name. In this Freddy is aided by his animal and human friends in Boomschmidt's Colossal and Unparalleled Circus and by Breckenridge, an eagle of high-flown diction ("Welcome, oh pig, to the starry upper spaces of the blue empyrean"), and hindered by the man with the black moustache and his dirty-faced son and by Mr. Gulcher, who wants Freddy's farmer friend and father-figure Mr. Bean to pay for the balloon and assorted "damages" and lost revenue caused by the pig.
One of the best parts of this novel is its secondary plot concerning the relationship between Alice and Emma and their Uncle Wesley. The charlatan male chauvinist duck so tyrannized his admiring and retiring nieces that a few years ago some of the Bean animals secretly kidnapped him and got an eagle to dump him in the next county. The obedient sister ducks were so long under the sway of their uncle, who instilled in them the belief that they must be ladylike at all times, never going anywhere or doing anything fun and deferring to his judgment in all things, "that even after his mysterious disappearance and freedom from his tyranny they continued to quack his praises and to do as they thought he would approve." Their gradual growth away from the influence of Uncle Wesley begins when they decide to accompany Freddy in the balloon. At one point Mrs. Webb (the spider) tells her husband, "If you got all swelled up like Wesley, and started telling me everything I did was wrong, I'd just quietly drop you overboard some night when we were sailing along in the balloon." And later Rudy the squirrel gives Emma and Alice a revealing angle on their uncle: "I know his kind. Regular tyrant around the house with his women folks, but as meek as Moses out around town." When considering this novel and Freddy the Politician (1939), in which Mrs. Wiggins runs for president of the First Animal Republic after being told, "a cow's place is in the home," it becomes apparent that Brooks was a proto-feminist.
Another thing I like about this book is its anti-cruelty to animals thrust. As in most of the other books in the series I've read, Brooks appropriately punishes or rewards people who abuse animals and people who are kind to them. The animals of Mr. Boomschmidt's circus are uncaged, help him run the circus, and help him teach a good lesson to a boy who's cruel to animals: "You know what it is like now to be helpless. I hope you'll remember it."
Like the other Freddy books, this one is full of humor, from witty lines about animal and/or human behavior, like "That's a cat all over. Let him think you don't want him to do something, and he's crazy to do it," to comedic situations, like when Freddy tries to stand motionless in a field with his arms outstretched like a scarecrow to avoid drawing the attention of a couple of policemen, while a fly called Zero tries to make him sneeze.
One disappointing thing in the novel is that only about 48 of its 244 pages consist of Freddy flying in the balloon, and apart from chapter 14, when he and Mr. Gulcher and some mice parachutists briefly go up in it, from Chapter 7 through Chapter 17 (the last one), Freddy is firmly on the earth, struggling to prove his innocence. The action in the air is exciting and impressive, as when the eagle Breckenridge joins the ballooning animals for some sandwiches, or as when Mr. Webb tells Freddy to stop worrying about being blown away and enjoy what must be "one of the finest views a pig ever set eyes on." By contrast, the action on the ground is often funny, but somewhat repetitive (Freddy wrestles Mr. Golcher twice and runs into some suspicious policemen twice).
Finally, both children and adults should enjoy this book and get much nourishment from it, especially people who like witty and unpredictable talking animal stories with some thematic heft. It was the first Freddy book I read as a boy and holds up well after 45 years.
Freddy and the Perilous Adventure (1942), the 9th entry in Walter R. Brooks' 26-book Freddy the Pig series, is a fun book. It begins when Freddy, clever detective, natural poet, and pig of many disguises and interests, is tricked into going up in a hot air balloon by Mr. Golcher, a sour-faced, thin man of business who refers to himself as "Golcher" and cheats people out of money and then dares them to take him to court. Mr. Golcher tricks Freddy by asking him to make a patriotic speech at a 4th of July event to attract a bigger crowd and then revealing that the pig will (of course) also have to go up in the balloon. Not the bravest of pigs, Freddy reluctantly realizes he can't back out: "Oh dear, I wish I wasn't such a fearless character." There's nothing for it but for him to put on his "intrepid-pig-who-scoffs-at-peril" and his "pig-who-is-about-to-go-up-in-a-balloon-and-thinks-nothing-of-it" expressions and get in the balloon, which is, after all only to go straight up and come straight down after a brief ascension. Moreover, Freddy will be accompanied by the white duck sisters Emma and Alice, who'd like a little adventure, as well as by Mr. and Mrs. Webb, the Bean farm's spider couple, who'd like a new point of view.
Nothing goes as planned. First, just before the pig is called on to make his speech, he chomps on a large piece of pulled candy made by the prisoners of the Centerboro jail, gluing his upper and lower teeth shut, so all he can say is, "Mmmmmmmmmmm," displeasing the crowd (isn't Freddy one of Mr. Bean's famous talking animals?). Second, a tangled valve cord prevents Freddy from bringing the balloon back to earth as scheduled, and when it's blown out of sight Mr. Gulcher accuses him of stealing the thing! The main plot relates the flight of the balloon and Freddy's attempts to avoid being arrested for theft and to clear his name. In this Freddy is aided by his animal and human friends in Boomschmidt's Colossal and Unparalleled Circus and by Breckenridge, an eagle of high-flown diction ("Welcome, oh pig, to the starry upper spaces of the blue empyrean"), and hindered by the man with the black moustache and his dirty-faced son and by Mr. Gulcher, who wants Freddy's farmer friend and father-figure Mr. Bean to pay for the balloon and assorted "damages" and lost revenue caused by the pig.
One of the best parts of this novel is its secondary plot concerning the relationship between Alice and Emma and their Uncle Wesley. The charlatan male chauvinist duck so tyrannized his admiring and retiring nieces that a few years ago some of the Bean animals secretly kidnapped him and got an eagle to dump him in the next county. The obedient sister ducks were so long under the sway of their uncle, who instilled in them the belief that they must be ladylike at all times, never going anywhere or doing anything fun and deferring to his judgment in all things, "that even after his mysterious disappearance and freedom from his tyranny they continued to quack his praises and to do as they thought he would approve." Their gradual growth away from the influence of Uncle Wesley begins when they decide to accompany Freddy in the balloon. At one point Mrs. Webb (the spider) tells her husband, "If you got all swelled up like Wesley, and started telling me everything I did was wrong, I'd just quietly drop you overboard some night when we were sailing along in the balloon." And later Rudy the squirrel gives Emma and Alice a revealing angle on their uncle: "I know his kind. Regular tyrant around the house with his women folks, but as meek as Moses out around town." When considering this novel and Freddy the Politician (1939), in which Mrs. Wiggins runs for president of the First Animal Republic after being told, "a cow's place is in the home," it becomes apparent that Brooks was a proto-feminist.
Another thing I like about this book is its anti-cruelty to animals thrust. As in most of the other books in the series I've read, Brooks appropriately punishes or rewards people who abuse animals and people who are kind to them. The animals of Mr. Boomschmidt's circus are uncaged, help him run the circus, and help him teach a good lesson to a boy who's cruel to animals: "You know what it is like now to be helpless. I hope you'll remember it."
Like the other Freddy books, this one is full of humor, from witty lines about animal and/or human behavior, like "That's a cat all over. Let him think you don't want him to do something, and he's crazy to do it," to comedic situations, like when Freddy tries to stand motionless in a field with his arms outstretched like a scarecrow to avoid drawing the attention of a couple of policemen, while a fly called Zero tries to make him sneeze.
One disappointing thing in the novel is that only about 48 of its 244 pages consist of Freddy flying in the balloon, and apart from chapter 14, when he and Mr. Gulcher and some mice parachutists briefly go up in it, from Chapter 7 through Chapter 17 (the last one), Freddy is firmly on the earth, struggling to prove his innocence. The action in the air is exciting and impressive, as when the eagle Breckenridge joins the ballooning animals for some sandwiches, or as when Mr. Webb tells Freddy to stop worrying about being blown away and enjoy what must be "one of the finest views a pig ever set eyes on." By contrast, the action on the ground is often funny, but somewhat repetitive (Freddy wrestles Mr. Golcher twice and runs into some suspicious policemen twice).
Finally, both children and adults should enjoy this book and get much nourishment from it, especially people who like witty and unpredictable talking animal stories with some thematic heft. It was the first Freddy book I read as a boy and holds up well after 45 years.
February 26, 2013
We started this book on SKYPE and then finished it while we were visiting in Brazil. The grandkids and I really enjoyed it. Lots of things to discuss; how to treat each other, what constitutes real bravery, and the importance of honesty and loyalty.
On to the next Freddy book.
On to the next Freddy book.
April 10, 2020
A classic
Another children’s book I missed when I was a child. I appreciated Freddy and the adventure as well as the morals of the story taught in a way an adult or a child can enjoy,
Another children’s book I missed when I was a child. I appreciated Freddy and the adventure as well as the morals of the story taught in a way an adult or a child can enjoy,
October 29, 2020
These books starring Freddy are charming. Love the talking pig and all the animals. Been reading this over Skype to our granddaughters who live across the country from us.
and I read Freddy the Detective on my own!
and I read Freddy the Detective on my own!
April 18, 2020
Quite a fun read!
What a nice enjoyable read, replete with both humor and good story morals. I recommend it as a book to read to your kids for family time.
What a nice enjoyable read, replete with both humor and good story morals. I recommend it as a book to read to your kids for family time.
January 29, 2023
'Freddy laughed..."That's the funny thing about adventures. I've had my share of them in my time, as you know, and my experience is that either you're too busy to think whether you're enjoying them or not, or else you're just scared. And yet there must be something about them that you like, too, or else you wouldn't go on trying to have more."'
Freddy the pig and his two duck friends go up in a hot air balloon, but when it comes time to let the balloon down, the valve doesn't work. Freddy is accused of stealing the balloon. Can Freddy figure out a way to get the balloon back to its owner without being arrested and sent to prison?
Does anyone else remember the talking pig, Freddy, who, along with his animal friends, set off on their various adventures? I couldn't resist picking up this book at a library sale some years ago, but it has been lingering on my shelves for too long. Now it will be off to a new reader via my LFL.
Freddy the pig and his two duck friends go up in a hot air balloon, but when it comes time to let the balloon down, the valve doesn't work. Freddy is accused of stealing the balloon. Can Freddy figure out a way to get the balloon back to its owner without being arrested and sent to prison?
Does anyone else remember the talking pig, Freddy, who, along with his animal friends, set off on their various adventures? I couldn't resist picking up this book at a library sale some years ago, but it has been lingering on my shelves for too long. Now it will be off to a new reader via my LFL.
September 10, 2022
Not quite what I expected from the title and cover. Freddy does indeed go up in a hot air balloon, with ducks Alice and Emma, and spiders Mr. and Mrs. Webb, and are briefly unable to get it down again due to a mechanical error. But the lion’s share of this book deals with the fallout of that, when the balloon’s owner accuses Freddy of stealing it. That was fun enough—Walter Brooks has such a charming style—but Freddy and the Ignormus also had Freddy be wrongly accused of a crime, and so do the next two books in the series; I’d have liked to see less of that, and more balloon adventures. There’s a subplot featuring Alice and Emma’s Uncle Wesley; it’s nice to see Alice and Emma assert themselves against him, even if his own moment of apotheosis is unbelievable.
The art in these books is always great, too; it shows up really well in the Kobo ebook, and no doubt the Kindle version as well.
The art in these books is always great, too; it shows up really well in the Kobo ebook, and no doubt the Kindle version as well.
October 2, 2025
This is not Brooks' strongest offering. Freddy and the ducks, Alice and Emma, take a balloon adventure that turns perilous as they realize they have no way to release the lever that will get them back down. Very little of substance happens, yet there are the usual side quests that have little to do with anything.
I did appreciate the ducks standing up to their abusive Uncle Wesley. That was a least something.
However, some things don't age well, including Freddy dressing up for a circus performance in blackface.
Overall, I'd say this one is one to skip in the broader collection.
I did appreciate the ducks standing up to their abusive Uncle Wesley. That was a least something.
However, some things don't age well, including Freddy dressing up for a circus performance in blackface.
Overall, I'd say this one is one to skip in the broader collection.
June 18, 2024
I love the Freddy books, but this one was particularly funny!
I loved that he went on an adventure with the ducks & the spiders-not your typical adventure partners.
I love that we see the circus friends again.
I love the witty repartee and that the girls (ducks) stood up for themselves in the end.
And the cuddle at the end!
I loved that he went on an adventure with the ducks & the spiders-not your typical adventure partners.
I love that we see the circus friends again.
I love the witty repartee and that the girls (ducks) stood up for themselves in the end.
And the cuddle at the end!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 31, 2022
Cute story about talking animals. Freddy goes for a balloon ride despite his fear. This book was part of a series of children's stories about Freddy the pig. Cute read for kids 8-10.
November 9, 2022
Okay, now THIS one is one of my very favorites. I like the sense of danger, I like the stuff with Uncle Wesley--pure fun on a bun.
April 3, 2023
Reread, and enjoyed again!
March 14, 2024
I thought Brooks had run out of satire and that this book was just a fun animal story, but no. In this volume he takes on mansplaining!
August 11, 2012
Freddy, that daring and poetic pig, is back again to face his biggest challenge yet: becoming the first pig to ever give a speech and then ascend high over the heads of his audience in a hot air balloon, accompanied by two duck friends, Alice and Emma, and the spidery Mr. and Mrs. Webb. Freddy regrets that his previous endeavors have given him a reputation for bravery when he thinks of the adventure that lies ahead, but he faces it with courage (after failing to convince someone else to take his place) and sets off on a wild ride that ends quite differently than he expected! Instead of a short jaunt into the sky, he and his companions find themselves drifting high over New York state! Will they ever see the Bean farm again? Just when it looks like they might be able to make it home, they learn that they're being hunted as criminals, for the greedy balloon owner has accused them of theft! How in the world will they ever clear their names without being thrown into jail? Resourceful as ever, Freddy finds help from a few friends in a traveling circus and, once again, saves the day for himself and Mr. Bean.
Spunky animals, imaginative plot, detestable villains, cute settings (like a town where the sheriff spends his days pulling candy with the criminals and a traveling zoo staffed by talking animals), important moral lessons...they're all here in one of the best Freddy books I've read yet! Freddy can get himself into a lot of trouble, but he always learns from his mistakes and Brooks uses them to teach kids (and adults!) simple things about life that we often take for granted, such as the importance of saying "I'm sorry," even if you're not always sure that it's necessary, and of being brave, even when you're scared. Don't miss out on reading these books. Short, funny and sweet, they're just the right thing to pick up on a day you're feeling a little blue!
Spunky animals, imaginative plot, detestable villains, cute settings (like a town where the sheriff spends his days pulling candy with the criminals and a traveling zoo staffed by talking animals), important moral lessons...they're all here in one of the best Freddy books I've read yet! Freddy can get himself into a lot of trouble, but he always learns from his mistakes and Brooks uses them to teach kids (and adults!) simple things about life that we often take for granted, such as the importance of saying "I'm sorry," even if you're not always sure that it's necessary, and of being brave, even when you're scared. Don't miss out on reading these books. Short, funny and sweet, they're just the right thing to pick up on a day you're feeling a little blue!
October 2, 2011
Compared to the last two Freddy books I read aloud to Noah, this one was just so-so (despite the terrific cover illustration---I tend to judge books by their covers). "Uncle Wesley" the duck was a rather tiresome character and Noah glazed over when the author described him at length. Also, I found myself interpreting passages for Noah more than before so that he would understand what was taking place.
Now I am really wanting to read him some books with humans as the main characters. If you have any suggestions for a five-year-old boy, please pass them along!
Now I am really wanting to read him some books with humans as the main characters. If you have any suggestions for a five-year-old boy, please pass them along!
December 5, 2012
One of my favorite of the Freddy books.
Visiting a county fair to give a speech ( he's a talking pig after all) Freddy and a pair of duck sisters get caught in an out of control balloon. They then have to figure out how to get down, how to get back when they have no idea where they've landed and how to stay out of trouble when they are accused of stealing the balloon.
Fun little adventure from a great, and mostly forgotten, series.
Shame nobody ever bought the cartoon rights to Freddy.
Visiting a county fair to give a speech ( he's a talking pig after all) Freddy and a pair of duck sisters get caught in an out of control balloon. They then have to figure out how to get down, how to get back when they have no idea where they've landed and how to stay out of trouble when they are accused of stealing the balloon.
Fun little adventure from a great, and mostly forgotten, series.
Shame nobody ever bought the cartoon rights to Freddy.
December 11, 2014
These gems from the 30s totally escaped my notice as a child and a thoughtful librarian pointed out to us these "Freddy the Pig" books as good early novels alongside Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, etc, and she was right. Funny and silly and fantastical, my kids ages 4-14 all laugh at the situations this pig and his friends get themselves into in this novel. I am sure we will read another one in the series now that Freddy is on our radar.
July 17, 2011
Such fun and insight into human behaviour through the actions of animals.
March 18, 2015
i liked it. it was funny
March 4, 2016
Yeah for Freddy the Pig!
February 12, 2019
I liked it
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