Bean Home News<\/em>. The former I tracked down at the local library when I lived out in Illinois for a time, but the latter had to wait until I joined the Friends of Freddy and Connie was willing to loan me books out of her complete set. So, interestingly enough, I have read Bean Home News only two or three times, as contrasted with the twenty or thirty for most of the rest of the books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not knowing the book halfway by heart already leads to some interesting and pleasant surprises\u0003: I had no recollection of the plot to get Mrs. Underdunk to donate the iron deer on her front lawn to the war effort, nor many of the other interesting elements in this book. Brooks is in fine form once again with his offhand (and offbeat) ideas: mice as enthusiastic gossips, Jerry the lazy ant and his pet beetle, Fido, Jinx\u2019s distinctively catlike means of collecting metal (he howls under people\u2019s windows and collects what they throw at him), and Old Whibley\u2019s \u201cyawn\u201d defense of Freddy, whereby he gets Mr. Garble to go to sleep and therefore lose his case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But I\u2019m getting ahead of myself. Let\u2019s return to the plot, which not surprisingly involves Freddy becoming a newspaper publisher. Seems that the dark forces in the town of Centerboro (i.e., Mrs. Underdunk and Mr. Garble) have conspired to take over the local newspaper, and they have no interest in animal news. So Freddy gets together with the former editor and starts producing a newspaper that\u2019s far more interesting than the Centerb\u0003oro Guardian is now. Underdunk and Garble of course don\u2019t appreciate this, and there begins to be quite a competition and argument between the two sides, with the sheriff of course on Freddy\u2019s side and therefore in some risk of losing his job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Charles gets a little overexcited on the side of good and directly attacks Mr. Garble, who inflates the attack a la Falstaff into one by multiple animals in which he barely escapes with his life. As an indirect result of this and an unfortunate encounter with Mrs. Underdunk a warrant is issued for Freddy\u2019s arrest, and he puts on his sailor outfit for the first time and hides out at the jail. He is finally discovered there in an entertaining scene in which Mr. Garble wants to take away Freddy and confine him, and the sheriff of course points out that Freddy is already where he\u2019s supposed to be, in jail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Freddy persuades Old Whibley to be his defense lawyer, and Whibley develops the aforementioned yawn defense, in which Mr. Garble is kept up seve\u0003ral nights in a row by noisy animals, then all the animals in the courtroom yawn in his presence, which eventually puts him to sleep so that he can\u2019t prosecute the case. So Freddy goes free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Next is the set-piece whereby the animals get Mrs. Underdunk\u2019s iron deer, with Freddy impersonating Senator Blunder (some good names in this one) and announcing the donation. The deception is soon uncovered, of course, and the animals only just make away with the deer, with Hank\u2019s brief impersonation of the statue providing a needed delay. However, Freddy is captured and is threatened for the first time with transportation to Montana. (Someday we should have a Freddy convention in Montana\u2014it seems appropriate, somehow.) He is rescued in the nick of time, however, and engineers his escape and the resulting treatment of Mr. Garble (who is about to be arrested for stealing him) in such a way as to\u2014remarkably\u2014earn the gratitude of the haughty Mrs. Underdunk and the interest of Senator Blunder in employ\u0003\u00cbing him. However, Freddy turns down this opportunity to enter politics and instead goes off to try to get Emma to teach him to quack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I realize in that summary I\u2019ve left out the subplot of the animals collecting metal for the war effort as part of a Centerboro-area contest that they hope to help Mr. Bean win. They do, of course, with Mrs. Underdunk\u2019s deer putting them over the top.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s one of the interesting things about the books in this period: the definite period feel, with talk of the war effort and how it affects the everyday lives of the humans and animals. Even as a kid I found that added an interesting flavor to the books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One thing I noticed in passing about this story is that it doesn\u2019t jump right into the plot the way so many of the other books do. In Wiggins for President, for example, you\u2019re not to page ten before the animals are talking about forming a government. In Perilous Adventure, Alice and Emma are talking straightaway about doing something more interesting. And \u0003so on. Brooks usually wastes no time getting the plot going. Here, though, he has a whole chapter with Charles first pretending to be sick with a cold then overextending himself and actually coming down with one. Not sure what to make of that, but it is an interesting contrast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what do I think about the book as a whole? Well, it seems to be somewhere in that great middle area. I don\u2019t think it belongs up with the best of the series with titles including Wiggins, Ignormus, and Cowboy, but neither does it seem to go down toward the bottom with Spaceship or Dragon. As with all the books, there are very funny, entertaining moments, and I think more in this book than most, and there is a reasonable plot, just not as strong a one as the best books. So let\u2019s put this one in the second rank, not too far below the first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Link to Friends of Freddy Book Club Meeting<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Back to the Bean Farm: Rereading the Freddy Books Freddy and the Bean Home News by Kevin W. Parker WARNING: These articles are written with the assumption that the reader has already read the story in question. Don\u2019t read this article if you want any surprises to be preserved for you. Last time I did the last book in the series; this time I will do the last book in the series for me. Yes, I led a deprived childhood: neither my school library nor the city library system had copies of either Flying Saucer Plans or Bean Home News. The former I tracked down at the local library when I lived out in Illinois for a time, but the latter had to wait until I joined the Friends of Freddy and Connie was willing to loan me books out of her complete set. So, interestingly enough, I have read Bean Home News only two or three times, as contrasted with the twenty or thirty for most of the rest of the books. Not knowing the book halfway by heart already leads to some interesting and pleasant surprises\u0003: I had no recollection of the plot to get Mrs. Underdunk to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3322","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\n
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