This book was clearly a labor of love, both from Overlook Press and from the many Friends of Freddy who contributed to it. As Michael Cart points out in his introduction, it's something of a dream come true: the first new Freddy book in over forty years.
The dustjacket is colorful but simple. Removing the dustjacket reveals a pleasant surprise: the front cover has a single illustration in the lower right corner, just as the original Freddy books did.
Going within to the text one encounters a splendid introduction by Michael Cart, beginning with a comparison of Freddy and Brooks that leads into a short biography and then into a brief history of the books themselves. He concludes with a celebration of the book itself, since "the delicious quotations you will discover here capture the humor--and the heart--of this wonderful series and remind us, as well, of how American these books are in their celebration of such virtues as honesty, bravery, responsibility, and, yes, common sense."
Turning the page brings one to the beginning of the "delicious quotations," which are organized by topic. They start, appropriately enough, with Friendship, and continuing with Bravery; Responsibility; Animal Aspects; Politics and the Law of the Farm; Imagination; Honesty; People, Pigs, and Popular Opinion; and Humor.
I won't go much into the quotations, since not only should just about everyone reading this have a pretty good idea of what they are, but I also picked out a bunch of them myself and so am more than a little prejudiced in the matter. Instead, let me talk about the presentation. Each two-page layout contains two or three quotations, with attribution indicating which book each came from, and frequently an appropriate Wiese illlustration. Each page also has a heading at the very top appropriate to the quote or quotes below. This is the only truly original part of the book and tends to be a bit uneven: though some headings are inane or just unnecessary, others supply the context (Sam Jackson the mole seeing his friends through glasses for once, for example), and others are truly inspired. I particularly like the heading for the quote about cats not practicing music unless they are continually rewarded: "Why cats will never get to Carnegie Hall."
It's kind of hard to know what to make of the quotes themselves,* though I'm sure my talk at the 1998 convention on "Everything I Need to Know I Learned From Freddy the Pig" would have been vastly easier to research if I'd had this book then. It's certainly fun reading and probably a handy reference when you're looking up some homily you can't quite remember. My thanks to Overlook for producing it, and to contributing editor Sarah Koslosky and all of the other Friends of Freddy who helped collect the quotes.
* Baseball statisticians and others who like to count things will of course be interested to know how many quotes came from which books. To my wife's amusement and derision, I include myself among one of these, and I took a tally with some rather surprising results. Well, it's not too surprising that Clockwork Twin (1 quote) and Dragon (2) come in at the bottom, but I was chagrined that my favorite, Ignormus, came in at 11th place with a mere 9 quotes. Clearly, the book is simply too deep and complex to be summarized with a handful of quotations.
Books beating it out included Cowboy and Magician, tied at 10; Men From Mars (12); Football (13); Pilot (14); and Camphor (15). Somehow I am not surprised that Perilous Adventure made it into fourth place with 17 quotes; however, the rest are rather a surprise: Simon the Dictator (18); North Pole (19); and, with a comfortable lead, Nancy Joroff's onetime favorite,** Popinjay (Popinjay!?) with a full 22 quotes. Other favorites too deep to be quoted extensively include Politician, Detective, and Freginald, each with 6, and Brooks' own favorite, Florida, with a mere 4.
**Nancy (Aladdine's mother) came to her first Freddy convention having read only one Freddy book, which she cheerfully reported to be her favorite to anyone who asked. It took her a long time to understand why she kept getting funny looks. Meanwhile, her current favorite (last I heard) was Politician.