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Title: Freddy Anniversary Collection
ISBN: 1585673463
Author:
Walter R. Brooks
Publicate Date: 2002-10-09
Publish: 2002-10-09
List Price: $35.00
Average Customer Rating: 5.0
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $21.84
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $14.49
Amazon Merchant Price: $23.10
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Ah, Freddie
Such fond memories from my childhood. I read all of Freddie's adventures when I was around 8 years old and they stick in my memory. That was over 50 years ago! I can't believe I remembered Freddie's name. Any child will enjoy this series. Freddy has been a good friend in my memory for all these years. Enjoy!
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2: Terrific kids lit
My 5th grade boy couldn't seem to get as interested in reading as his older borther was at the same age. He disliked all of the many, many books we have from when his older brother was that age. His older brother liked conflict type books like Jacques' Redwall series where there always seemed to be some grand battle brewing between good and evil.
The younger one is much gentler and avoids conflict and dark books like the Harry Potter series. Finally, I found that he likes the same Freddy the Pig stories that I so tremendously enjoyed reading when I was his age. There is no fighting although there is adventure and a gentle page-turning plot of "what will come next". To my surprise I find these are much better than the more recent books intended for his age group so I guess he just has good taste.
I read them to him at bedtime and he reads them on his own at other times. The earlier stories are almost 80 years old but they don't seem at all dated. Each book has a main plot with lots of little sub-plots running though them just like an adult novel. Once you accept pigs, cats, mice, etc, talking and interacting with humans everything seems perfectly reasonable. Interesting and fun - highest recommendation.
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3: Wonderful, engrossing series.
I was seven or eight when I found the Freddy books on tape at my library. I checked one out and am still listening and reading them five years later. My parents constantly wonder why I read such easy and, to them, childish books.
But the reason is very simple. They are wonderful books, which immediatly
transport you to the marvelous world of Freddy and his friends. Cocky Charles the Rooster and his irritable wife, Henrietta, the sarcastic and witty Jinx the Cat, Mrs. Wiggins, the intelligent cow, and a plethora of other well written charecters grace the pages of these books. They are also books that make you think. More than once I had to ask my parents what words like "constituents" ment. I learned things about banking, trial and jury, and geography, among other things.
These are books for everyone, but especially children. Freddy was a magical part of my childhood. Anyone who hasn't read these is missing out
on a magical part of life.
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4: A Teen's Point of View
The Freddy books are so great! They are especially good for reading out loud and the whole family will find them exciting and hilarious. They're good books for all ages.
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5: Educational and entertaining: dynamite!
Brooks wrote the Freddy series between 1927 and 1958. They combine superb character development, unbelievable educational content, and generally mesmerizing entertainment. They are appropriate for reading to children as young as five or six, and make excellent readers for children from nine to as old as early teens.
If you read Freddy to very young children, expect to leave out some slower-moving segments and provide lots of side explanations. The good news is that these books can make your kids WANT to know more about judges and juries, bond and bail, the electoral process, World War II, banking, newspaper publishing, geography, ... I could go on and on. The vocabulary-building value is also enormous: words like "constituents" and "torrid" are sprinkled in throughout.
If you look at the membership of the Friends of Freddy organization, you'll find it is predominantly male. I think that's because of the book titles, not the content. My second grade daughter looks forward to my reading Freddy every night. She has named toys after Brooks' characters. Brooks handles the characters and their relationships so deftly that literary experts have suggested that these works actually inspired Orwell's Animal Farm. Oh, and the president of the First Animal Republic was a female.
Before Overlook republished the entire series, some rarer titles were bringing as high as $200 each. That fact aside, this combination of the first three titles in a single volume is a terrific bargain. I would argue that Freddy Goes to Florida and Freddy the Detective are the two best books of the 26 book series anyway.
In this age of unlimited access to Disney DVDs and slam-bam, in-your-face video games, the Freddy series just might be your kids' ticket back to calmer, more thoughtful, and much more valuable entertainment. But be warned: you may find your fifth grader reading under his blankets with a flashlight long after he's supposed to be asleep. It happened to my parents when I was in the fifth grade.
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