Not every children's book reads aloud well. We started the elementary school's "home reading program" with a winner, E. B. White's Charlotte's Web (1952), and those are the (admittedly large) shoes that I try to fill with each succeeding title. Besides that read-aloud cadence - you notice it more when it's missing - the book must be comprehensible to a child, but also intriguing to a parent. Vocabulary needs to be pitched just slightly above the child's reading level, so that there are occasional "new" words. Short chapters and large print are a boon. Most importantly, the pace of the story has to be quick enough that reading a few pages each night will keep otherwise recalcitrant readers hooked.
There is plenty to grin about in Freddy the Detective, not just in the plot itself but also in the peripheral details. Take the three cows, for example: Mrs. Wiggins, Mrs. Wogus, and Mrs. Wurzburger. I haven't stopped laughing over those names yet. Mrs. Wiggins' conviction that she never has ideas also cracks me up:
"You know thinking isn't my strong point, Freddy. I mean, I've got good brains, but they aren't the kind that think easily. They're the kind of brains that if you let 'em go their own way, they are as good as anybody's, but if you try to make them do anything, like a puzzle, they just won't work at all."Two pages later, when she's casually given Freddy the very idea he needs to solve his current detective case, she protests, "Gracious, Freddy, that isn't an idea; it's just something I thought of." (p. 104-107)
Brooks' main characters, such as Freddy the Pig and Jinx the Cat, are a tad confusing and inconsistent; you're never quite sure what to expect of them. But his peripheral character sketches can be dead-ringers. I began to take Brooks' literary skill more seriously while listening to Charles the Rooster's speech in chapter 5 (p. 92-96). As Brooks explained,
"The rooster was a fine speaker and he used words so beautifully that they all liked to hear him, although they didn't always know what he was talking about. Neither did he, sometimes, but nobody cared, for, as with all good speakers, what he said wasn't half so important as the noble way he said it."The ensuing speech was exactly as advertised. It was tough going for a new reader, with four pages of big words that didn't seem to mean anything. I thought to myself that Brooks must have had a specific person for his model to get the effect so perfect.
By this point in the book, I was often tempted to read ahead just for fun; there was no danger of being bored the second time through. I was watching for the clever details I'd come to expect. Surely it's no accident that Charles the Rooster is married to Henrietta the Hen, and hen-pecked to boot. Presumably Brooks had read some vivid 17th C English history, just like he'd absorbed political speechifying! I also noted the pairing of Frederick the Pig and Ferdinand the Crow as prosecuting and defending attorneys, respectively, in the book's climactic trial scene. Any connection to the Bohemian Revolt at the outset of the Thirty Years' War in Europe (1618-1648)? (Admittedly, I have yet to find hard evidence that Frederick of the Palatine and Ferdinand the Hapsburg might be in view...)
Given all this evidence of subtle artistry, I was shocked to realize one night - in the middle of the night - that the "bad guy" rats in the book are Jews.
...to be continued...
