The first of a series of books about Freddy. Tired of long, hard winters, the animals on the Bean Farm in upstate New York decide to go to Florida for the winter. The animals encounter burglars, outwit a group of hungry alligators, and discover buried treasure before returning to their home

Mr. Bean's farm animals are very intelligent. They can read and some can write.A pig named Freddy gets the idea from a sparrow to migrate.He,a cow,a dog,a horse,two spiders,two ducks,and a cat all migrate to Florida for the Winter they have an exciting trip there and an exciting trip back to New York they meet the President and alligators and much, much, more.This book is full of adventure and humor.I recommend it to everyone. There are other Freddy books such as Freddy the Detactive,Freddy and the Bean Home News,Freddy and the Space Ship.

How many New Yorkers years for the warmth of Florida during winter? Snow birds? Such are the yearnings of Freddy adn the other barn animals. They leave their farm and start on the trek just as many New Yorkers do down I-95.....but with less adventures.
it is wonderful to have the Freddy books being reprinted for in freddy and his friends we can all see ourselves. Besides, they are just plain fun.
PS. I could be moving to Florida.....

Probably before you were born, the bookmobile would stop off at our school and I looked forward to reading "Freddy" books. I enjoyed all of his adventures and friends (Jinx had a few adventures of his own). Now those books are collector's items and rarely show up in used book stores. As much as I miss the originals he is back and just as ornery as ever. One Day I hope the earlier one will get republished. In the mean time Even thought these books are geared towards young ones, they still can hold the attention of old codgers.

Kurt wise does a good job of illustrating and for those that have never reads Freddy you have a great mystery ahead of you.

This may well be the best of the Freddy books written by Walter R. Brooks (its only competition is Freddy the Magician). Children and adults alike will find this one of the most fun books they've ever read. I can still remember the delicious chills I felt when reading this book at twelve, and still enjoy reading it today. As usual, Freddy gets into trouble trying to help friends -- Mr. Camphor to get rid of his aunts and an innkeeper whose hotel is haunted.

My first encouner with Freddy the pig left me feeling like I had just found Tut's tomb. His stories are loaded with treasures-wit, well-developed characters, and clear evidence that Brooks understood and RESPECTED children's intellect and character. Two foretrotters Up!!

I have a house under construction and I need information on windows types, heating and cooling appliance options as well as insulations. This book is over 5 stars. I borrowed a copy from a library and am planning to buy one for reference collections.

This book covers both the house itself (insulation, windows, etc.) as well as appliances, furnaces, and lightbulbs. Written in 1999, it lists major appliances, windows, furnaces, boilers, and air conditioners by brand name and model number in table format showing the energy ratings of each one. This saves you the time of running around town or making dozens of phone calls to collect this info.

It also explains all the information contained on energy labels when you go shopping. In particular, I found the section on windows most beneficial. It details what tests are done to obtain the ratings, which tests are most relevant and which ratings you should pay particular attention to, as there are several ratings on each window.

It also was bold enough to say which things you should be spending your money on and which things are nice to have but not absolutely necessary.

I bought this book from amazon for research into healthy houses and I skimmed it for my deadline. I'm reading it closely now. Well written, easy to read, detailed, comprehensive. Even if you haven't a speck of money for new appliances, much less a new heating system, you can save money on energy. It's small--you can fit in your bag to take to the appliance store, but it's packed with stuff. Well worth the price.

It is only inevitable that the indefagatible Frederic Bean, bank manager, newspaper owner, detective, and overall pig extraordinaire should also become an ace barnstormer. How this comes to be is the subject of "Freddy the Pilot" a 1952 effort by Freddy's creator Walter R. Brooks. It all starts when Boomschmidt's Stupendous and Unexcelled Circus returns to Centerboro a bit early so that Mr. Boomschmidt can enlist Freddy's help in solving a dilemma the circus is in.

The star of the circus is the beautiful Mademoiselle Rosa, a bareback rider whose grace and ability are part of the Circus's special magic. Unfortunately, Watson P. Condiment, a very rich, but not particularly nice, comic book publisher has fallen in love with Rosa. Despite her refusal to encourage him, Condiment is fixated on his goal. So intent is he that he is more than willing to destroy the Circus entirely in order to propel Mademoiselle Rose into his arms.

The nefarious Mr. Condiment has tried many rotten tricks to close the Circus down, but the worst is having a plane dive bomb the Circus, blasting the audience with flour bag bombs. Mr. Boomschmidt keeps having to return the crowd's ticket money and is in great danger of going broke. Freddy summons his courage and decides to beard the mystery pilot in his den. Our pig shows up at the local air field and takes flying lessons. Soon he has his own plane and is preparing for his counter attack.

Freddy, assisted by his partner Mrs. Wiggins, a troop of Robin Hood-like skunks and the Horrible gang of scurrilous rabbits mount the effort designed to save the Circus and rescue Mademoiselle Rosa. The reader can count on a great deal of fun and excitement as one villain after another is rousted and sent on his way. The ingenious plot will even involve the U.S. Army and Uncle Ben's astonishing combination bomb sight and piggy bank.

Once again we are treated to a lovable adventure which teaches by example rather than lecture. The reader quickly finds out that courage, respect, and teamwork are the keys to success and happiness in Centerboro and the Bean Farm. Although late in the series, "Freddy the Pilot" can stand on its own without losing the reader. Kurt Wiese's original illustrations, always a treat, are exceptional in this volume, making it will worth its reasonable price.

This is not one of my favorites among the Freddy books (which is only a tiny insult because I like them all so much), but it has more imaginative ideas in it than any other two books in the series. Here you'll find:

- rabbits jumping out of airplanes using umbrellas

- a bombsight that helps you find money

- a comic book publisher terrified when he thinks his characters are coming to life

- skunks fighting with quarterstaffs

and that's just the tip of the iceberg in this densely plotted, multifaceted book. In addition, you have the usual Freddy features of delightfully entertaining and sympathetic characters, gentle satire, and a sense of fun. Highly recommended.

This is just one of the 26 Freddy the Pig books written by Walter R. Brooks between 1927 and 1958. Through his many adventures, Freddy, the "Renaissance Pig" of the Bean Farm in Centerboro, New York, is beset by hilarious villains and assisted by a whole barnyard of unforgettable animal friends. In "Pilot" he takes to the air to save a local circus from a more sinister aerial apparition. The Freddy books were written for children, but they're substantial enough for us grown-ups, too. I first read about Freddy 40 years ago, and I'm not tired of him yet. Easily the Peer of Pooh.

This book is by far the best children's book I've ever owned. My son received it as a gift at his birth. We spent many happy moments reading the stories and poetry in this book. He can still recite the favorites! He is now in college, but the book is timeless. It has everything from funny poetry to short stories. It has all the classics in just one place. We always found something to suit the mood! If your kids love to hear stories from you this is a great option. My daughter also enjoyed this book growing up. She delighted in the "Stupids Step Out" and "Mrs. Simpkins Bathtub." Curious George was another favorite. The list could go on and on. I will never part with this book.

There comes a time in nearly everyone's life when they look at fairy tales and consider themselves to be too old to read them. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is a certain pleasure to be derived from such tales that take us back to the days when life was simple and so many things were still possible. As adults, we find it too easy to consider things impossible. So much so that we can convince ourselves not to do things simply because we have lost our sense of wonderment. If you talk to scientists, of which I have been one, they will say that to be successful, you must have an overpowering curiosity and a passion to learn how things work. In other words, never lose the child's sense of wonder and discovery and still believe in the fairy tale. As the late, great baseball player Roy Campanella used to say, "You have to be a man to play this game, but you also have to have a lot of little boy in you."
I read fairy tales often, as refreshing interludes between writing and reading technical books in mathematics and computing. I have found the tales in this book to be very refreshing, having read my favorites many times over. The stories by Hans Christian Anderson and the Grimm brothers are my favorites. While the situations are of course fantasy, the points of the stories are very true, still applicable centuries after they were first put on paper. I once made myself very unpopular in responding to a business initiative by ending an e-mail with the acronym BTEHNC (But The Emperor Has No Clothes). After a day of angry responses, the proposal was recognized as the empty balloon that it was and it was quickly canceled and forgotten.
So much of our cultural heritage appears in the folk tales that were orally passed down for generations before they were finally committed to paper. We owe it to all future generations, starting with our children, to make sure that these tales stay part of our cultural memory. These tales are all classics, worth reading whether you are physically or intellectually youthful.

This was my favorite book when I was little, and I have read the entire book many times. It collects some of the best short stories, nursery rhymes, and fables in children's literature into one fabulous book. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who loves stories, but children especially will be pleased with the content and the excellent illustrations. This is a book that everyone should have in their collection. You won't regret it!

Donald Morrill has written a beautiful book. The poems in _At the Bottom of the Sky_ are deeply refective and intelligent and more: they are robust and generous, the product of both mind and heart. The sentences here are rich and complex, breaking perfectly across lines that are measured with a deft authority. This is a powerful, distinguished collection, and Morrill deserves our attention and praise.

I have a friend who tells a story of watching a subtitled movie at a little arthouse. Suddenly he looked up at the screen and the subtitles were gone, and for a moment he thought he could magically understand French-until he realized a moment later that the second reel was dubbed.

I don't believe this story, but it does provide a parallel for my experience of reading Donald Morrill's first book of poems, and the experience others may have of it as well. The book seems tough going at first. And then at some point in the reading process something changes. There are no lips moving out of whack with English. You just suddenly *do* understand the poet's language, and the life of the characters captured therein, as if it and they were your own.

Morrill clearly makes demands on the reader, and this is a book that demands-and deserves-multiple readings. The poems sometimes move forward more by association than pure logic, almost as in Ashbery. There are passages that mix plentiful abstractions with exotic specifics like Stevens does in his best work. Often the poet will weave two or more threads of narrative or discourse, and leap from one to the other suddenly. In "The Taken: A Letter," for example, the speaker observes two lovers unknown to him as in public they embrace and kiss and begin to cry as if parting. Four stanzas later the speaker's friend suddenly walks into the poem and suggests the two of them go look for the speaker's backpack that was stolen the night before. The lovers are gone from the page, not to return! But near the end of the poem we find that in the lost backpack was a cassette tape of the speaker pleading with his lover not to leave him. So for the reader, the public lovers are, though not invoked, clearly recalled.

This is a common strategy in the book, but there are so many variations on it that the reader doesn't get tired. One variation has the poet bring up one subject, then a second or a third, and then surprise us by speaking of the later subject in terms of an earlier one. I actually started to watch for this move, but it still caught me in delight each time it reappeared. "Fairgrounds" begins with a group of hunting boys pouring water down a ground squirrel's burrow; by the end of the poem the boys have grown, aware, the poet tells us, of "the quick choices that flush us out." Another poem imagines coyly what would happen on the day "you or I fix the boss's brow with a wide, wet smooch." The poem winds away from the workplace setting into comic abstraction, but then in the last lines Morrill returns for the pun: "This is our *business* among the pretenders until the day you or I *rise to make a motion*. (italics, of course, mine). In a more subtle instance of the same, "A Better Muse" begins "I remember her voice," and proceeds to describe a former lover so engagingly that we've forgotten about this retrospective "I remember" frame until we get to the end of the poem. Then we come upon the poet's leap: "I want tonight-you and I here in this house naked beneath its paint." The result is our surprise, and our delight as we look back to see we'd been prepared for this introduction of the current lover.

The poems are not afraid of such language play and strategizing, but we don't feel manipulated or used by it. Nor does it seem like technique or form is the end in itself. It's merely that the craft is worth paying attention to for those who like to see how things work (and yes, how they sometimes don't). But the poems are not textbook examples. In fact, far more than most recent volumes I've come across, At the Bottom of the Sky is *about* something. Even better, the individual poems are about many different things. One of the strengths of the book is the dramatic situations from which the poems arise. A body in Tibet is being prepared for consumption by vultures. A man smothers his cancer stricken brother with a pillow. The poet's sister smashes her mother's aquarium with a hammer, screaming I'm outta here! A shoplifter appears to swipe bananas at the local market, but after he's made it through the checkout, pulls the empty pockets of his jacket inside out for all to see. Presto.

There is great variety too in the characters we meet in the book, for this is not the work of a self-absorbed intelligence, out of touch with the world. The poet/speaker's father appears in a few poems, but so do the manager of a wildlife sanctuary, a boy selling blankets on a Mexican beach, protesters in Cracow at the fall of Communism, and the man to whom Marco Polo dictated his Travels. Consider too these titles as evidence of Morrill's skill in formulating ideas for poems: "To My Father's First Wife: The Adulteress," "Blue Star Home" (remember those?) "A Plateful of Hummingbird Tongues" and "Single's Guide to Marrieds."

This is a rich and rewarding, a demanding and varied collection. When poems fall short, as they must in any book, it is for the right reason--the goals were too lofty, not because the craft was insufficient. And through the intelligence and complexity there shine the rewards of lyric moments, such as this one from "Elegy":

If you hear now,/ hear our words,/ not our thoughts (which you would only know anyway as your own-/ human, embarrassingly various)./ Must we always be reminded,/ this way,/ to live?/ A candle weeps in each hand/ until there are no more tears, no more words./

Richard Terrill

A long time ago (as people count these things) a somewhat overweight, near-sighted 8-year old boy wandered up to the young readers section of his local library and took down a strange volume entitled "Freddy the Detective." To be frank, the boy had only just realized that there were books to read beyond Dick and Jane. Bored, he took the book back home and discovered an entirely new world. And changed his life forever.

That same boy, now much older, has recently discovered that, far from disappearing from the shelves, Freddy the Pig still is available and is still being read. Curious to see if the magic was still there, this reviewer once again took it home. I am pleased to report that Freddy remains one of Americas greatest heroes.

"Freddy the Detective" is one of the early books in a series that stretches from 1928 to include 25 volumes of delight for both children and the adults they are bringing up. Freddy is not your ordinary barnyard animal. Not only do all the animal's on Mr. Bean's farm talk and help with the chores. Certain of them have taken the trouble to learn to read and write. Freddy's latest conquest is "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" and he has decided to become the world foremost porcine investigator.

Freddy, his best friend Jinx the cat, and the sensible Mrs. Wiggins the cow confront many difficult challenges. These include the case of Everett Bean's stolen toy trains, the case of the missing rabbit, the countless plots of Simon the rat and his dishonest clan, and the case of the robbers in the hermit's cabin. And, in a grand finale, Freddy defends Jinx himself from charges of murder. Throughout all of this, our indomitable pig keeps up his plucky attitude. There is as much action in this story as there is in most efforts at more recent fiction. And a lot more fun as well.

Brooks' farm world is a microcosm of real world about us, but one were the animals are often wiser than the people. With the exception of the dastardly Simon the animals treat each other well even when they disagree. Many of them parody our own silliness, like the pompous rooster judge, but they all are likeable. I also appreciate the positive attitude that permeates Brooks writing. "Freddy the Detective" is still good reading 70 years after it was written. And the farm setting gives it a certain timelessness. It combines humor and strong values in an entertaining package, and has convinced more than one young reader that the world of books is a very fine place.

Many rears ago the local library was too far to walk to so a book buss would bring them to our school. I milled offer the shelves and found a series of intriguing stories. It was the Freddy the pig series. I enjoyed many hours reading about Freddy's adventures with his pal Jinx. Then for years he just disappeared from view. No one ever heard of him. I combed the used bookstores and still no one heard of him. Then one day he returned. Today I am rediscovering Freddy. Not only are there new adventures but the originals ar being republished.
This is the best book to start with; it explains how Freddy became a detective, which he uses, in subsequent adventures. After reading a book on Sherlock Holmes he decides he can be a pretty good detective and recruits friends in the process.
The stories are intriguing in them selves. However underlying the story are several real life concepts for one to work out as what's the matter with going to jail if you get fed and do not have to work? What do you do when the judge has already made up his mind befor the trial? I especially like the way he browbeats the pore little rabbit during his interrogation. One forgets how intimidating it could be.
Well you will enjou this story as freddy must fingure out what happened to a childs toy train and what diabolical plot it is used in.

The Freddy the Pig adventures are almost unique in children's literature. Few series, whether for children or adults are so full of the sense of community, and the character's place in that community than the Freddy books are. I've just reread six of them (two aloud) with my children. I'm amazed to find that you can read this series, end to end, in much the same way that you would read Trollope's Barchester novels, or Anthony Powell's Dance---as life caught in microcosm, studied, and loved and laughed at, and to hell with the fact that these are animals. I step off the subway each day and enter an office that is remarkably like Freddy's world, except we have few adventures. These are great books and I hope the publisher will find a ready audience for them.

Totally disgusting is about a cat named Mewkiss, a dog named Barkus, and another cat named Allergies. Mewkiss is afraid of rats until Allergies tells her a story about a cat named Mukiz. That builds up her courage to go find them. they go on many adventures and you'll have to read this book to find out about it.
I would recommend this book because it has good details and is a good adventure book. I like llamas.

Everbody should read this book it is exciting adventurous and scary. People who love animals would love this book. It's about a dog and a cat that try to eliminate these two rats that are trying to hurt their owners.

I read this book along time ago, and I enjoyed it very much. I lost it for a couple years and i couldnt remember the name; I found it again last night and stayed up and read it,I couldnt put it down!! It is the cutest story, and was pretty exciting, especially when Mewkiss was fighting the rat. If you want a good book that wont take you too long to read i would really recomend this book.

This is the best Bunnicula book written. I have read the whole series and this is the best!

I loved the book and if your thinking about buying it go for it.However if you haven't read Bunnicula and Howliday Inn your really missing out on some great books and you should get those too!

Bunnicula is a vampire bunny and he is on the loose. The Monroes, the family who owns Bunnicula, really don't have a clue about his escape. Bunnicula's pals Harold, Chester, and Howie are there to track him down in order to stop disaster. Chester has a theory that if Bunnicula bites the vegetables in everyone's garden they will turn into vampire vegetables and then attack the town. The message to the readers relays that ones mind can jump to many conclusions from the simple to the bazaar. Chester's idea of what may happen is defiantly leaning towards the bazaar. I like Celery Stalks at Midnight because the author told the story using animals which creates a hilarious picture in my mind.I recommend this book to all ages because of the animals and the mysterious happenings.

This book is about a girl who becomes friend with a boy named donald. Donald was burned at a young age and has not been the most popluar persion in the world. Maria who is the girl becomes one of Donalds olny friends alothogh its sad it has so many lauhs a long the way. It deals with presure and over coming it Ipersionaly loved the book and would no dout read it again! "GOTTA LOTTA" baby all the way(u'll get it when you read it)

A night without stars sort of forshadows my life from the ages of 6 months old until I was 6 years old only my surguries were on my feet. The nervousness that Maria feels the night befor her surgury is the same that I felt. The fact that she is having open heart surjury is much more serious and frightening. Well I thought some parts in the begining were sort of confusing but thats me, everything is so confusing. A Night Without Stars was certainly one of my favorite books and I think that everyone should read it. Boys and girls. I mean who cares if the main character is a girl, boys should read it anyways. I thing this book should be a middle school, or high school requirment throughout the united States of America.

This book is among one of my Top 10 faves! It's even better than the Bunnicula books,especially since the characters are human. Maria was apprehensive about having heart surgery. Getting no information from doctors,friends,or family didn't help. She made new friends in the hospital. Although they told her to avoid a burn victim cruelly nicknamed Monster Man,she resisted peer pressure and befriended the boy. They both helped each other through their surgeries. Since I want to be a writer,Donald's poetry interested me. He coped with disaster the way many other ostracized teens would: by withdrawing and showing hostility. Only Maria cracked his tough shell of bitterness. The story behind this story(it's in the back of the book on the page about the author)is really touching. Enough waxing philosophical,now for the most important part: get this book.You won't regret it.