Freddy The Pig, Rediscovered

Found at Florence, KY

When we took Isaac to the Cincinnati airport last summer, we discovered Half Price Books, a great bookstore in Florence, KY. We revisited the store on our way to Cleveland a few weeks ago.

Isaac sold a few used books and bought at least twice as many as he sold. I bought a couple of books for Dennis, and for myself, a copy of The Art of Freddy. It was well worth the $2 it cost, just for the memories.

Freddy and me

The Freddy series was written by Walter Brooks and illustrated by Kurt Wiese. Freddy is a pig. He and all the other animals on Mr. Bean's farm can talk. They are very good at solving mysteries and getting into complicated, dangerous situations that always turn out all right in the end.

There are 26 Freddy books (I know this from counting the book covers shown in The Art of Freddy, and Wikipedia verifies it.) I think the Rock County library had 15 or 20 of them when I was a kid, and I read every one.

I read Freddy's Perilous Adventure, dozens of time, because we owned it. It was a library book originally. I left it on the windowsill, and a summer thunderstorm soaked it. The cover was warped and the pages were wavy, so my mother had to pay the library for the book.

Freddy's Perilous Adventure was my main book for the rest of that summer, along with whatever I could find around the house to read, because I was grounded from the library. I was glad when I got back to school and the bookmobile! I liked Freddy and his animal friends, but I was ready for them to have a different adventure.

They're still adventuring!

Isaac was still shopping, so I enjoyed the illustrations in my Freddy book for a while. Then I walked out of the store to put my books in the car. After getting reacquainted with Freddy and his friends, it was a bit surreal to see these geese strolling across the parking lot. I wouldn't have been surprised at all if they had wished me a good afternoon or asked for directions.