The New York Times Book Review, in a pull-quote on the back of my copy of this book, compares Freddy to Pooh and to The Wind in the Willows. Having just read the first book in this series about a talking, adventuresome pig and his equally anthropomorphized barnyard friends, I’m not quite ready to go there. Freddy isn’t as wise or philosophical as Pooh, nor are the friendships in this first volume of Freddy quite as iconic as that of Mole and Ratty and Toad. Nevertheless, I’m a fan, and I do want to read more.

Originally published in 1927 under the title of To and Again (glad they changed the title), Freddy Goes to Florida chronicles the adventures of Freddy the Pig, Mrs. Wiggins the cow, Charles the rooster and his wife Henrietta, Jinx the cat, and various and sundry other animals from Mr. Bean’s farm in Vermont(? or somewhere up north) as they become the first farm animals to take a cue from the birds and migrate to Florida for the winter. Unfortunately, the animals can’t fly south; they have to walk. But Freddy makes up songs to pass time as they hike along together, and sometimes the smaller animals catch a ride on the back of Mrs. Wiggins or Hank the Horse.

The animals talk to each other just as you and I would if we were on a ramble down to Florida, but they don’t really communicate in human speech with the people they meet along the way. They draw a certain amount of attention as the first farm animals to think of migrating, but not as much as you might think. They encounter kidnappers, thieves, and alligators—all of whom must be outwitted and/or defeated in their nefarious schemes. And then, in the spring, the animals return to Mr. Bean’s farm with a present for Mr. Bean and having satisfied their wanderlust for the time being.

The illustrations by Kurt Wiese are vivid and humorous in pen and ink. The story itself is gentle and funny with just enough thrill and danger to keep the plot moving, but not enough to make it at all scary or nightmare-inducing. Here’s a description of a lady’s house (sounds a lot like mine) just to give you a taste of the style:

“There were a number of things on the shelf. There was a photograph of Aunt Etta, and a photograph of her married daughter who lived in Rochester, and a spool of black darning-cotton, and an alarm clock, and a butcher’s bill, and a picture postcard of Niagara Falls, and seven beans, and a box of matches, and quite a lot of dust. The dust was there because Aunt Etta, although she was a kind-hearted woman, wasn’t a very good housekeeper. She spent too much time reading the newspaper.”

That describes me and my shelves to a T, except it’s not the newspaper I’m reading—it’s books for children like Freddy Goes to Florida.

Mr. Brooks, a journalist himself, wrote twenty-six books about Freddy and his friends. I have six of those Freddy books in my library. I think my next read in the series will be Freddy the Detective, which isn’t the next one in the series (Freddy Goes to the North Pole is the second books published), but is the next one that I own (#3).