Last year, the highly esteemed editor of the Bean Home Newsletter, Mr. Kevin Parker, wrote an article outlining certain criticisms of Freddy and the Dragon. Mr. Parker concluded that as Freddy and the Dragon is the last book in the series, Brooks alludes too often to events in previous books, that Brooks repeats himself, and that the plot is weak, episodic and missing any great villain like Simon or E.H. Anderson.
These criticisms, while perhaps not entirely unfounded, strike me as the criticisms of an adult, an adult who perhaps has read the Freddies one too many times. (If such a thing could be.) I will argue that read from a child's perspective, Freddy and the Dragon is as fresh, as enthralling, and as memorable as any of the twenty-five preceding books. It is true, though, that I read Freddy and the Dragon first, before I read the other twenty-five. I started backwards and so my first introduction to Freddy was this paragraph:
Freddy, the pig, and Jinx, the black cat, in their cowboy clothes, were riding down through Main Street in Centerboro toward their home, on the Bean farm. Freddy was astride Cy, his western pony and Jinx rode Bill, the goat. Holding to the pommel of Freddy's saddle rode their friend,Samuel Jackson, the mole.
If this is the reader's twenty-sixth Freddy book, this first paragraph is mere preliminary, but imagine if you read this with no expectations whatsoever: a pig and a cat, dressed in cowboy outfits, with a mole named Samuel Jackson along for the ride? It must have been clear even to my eight year old mind that I was about to encounter a fantasy world unlike any other.
No sooner are Freddy and Jinx settled into the pigpen, when the reader is treated to one of the funniest scenes in the entire series. Their reception in Centerboro was not as friendly as they had expected, and now Mrs. Peppercorn has sent Jimmy Wiggs with a message. The farm animals are crowded around Jimmy, snickering, and Freddy and Jinx, ready for a nap after their ride, are not pleased at the interruption.
'Hello, Freddy,' Jimmy said. 'I've got a letter for you.' He held up a white envelope. Freddy couldn't reach it over the heads of all the animals crowded up around the door. Charles hopped up on the handlebars of Jimmy's bicycle and took the letter in his claw. But instead of passing it along to Freddy, he squinted at the address, first with one eye and then with the other. Then he burst into a crow of laughter. 'That's right, Jimmy; that's what you said. That's the way it's addressed: 'Frederick Bean is queer.'" And all the small animals giggled.
Freddy had reached out a fore trotter for the letter, but now he drew it back. "If this is a gag,' he said crossly, 'it's a pretty feeble one. So if you'll excuse me, I'll go back and finish my nap. . . . Mrs. Peppercorn would never send me a note with 'Frederick Bean is queer' written on it," he said.
'Well -- it looks like that,' said Jimmy apologetically.
Jinx had come to the door beside the pig.
'Look at it, you dope,' he said impatiently. 'Look at it.' And he reached out and took the envelope.
'Why,sure,' he said. 'Frederick Bean er . . . h'm. . . ha!' he stopped and grinned. 'Well, it ain't spelled right, but it sure looks as if the old lady had your number, kid. 'Queer' it is. Boy it takes'em a long time, but they get on to you in the end!'
'Let me look at that!' Freddy snatched the letter from the cat's claws. Some of the rabbits were going around in a circle, a sort of war dance, giggling and chanting:
'Frederick Bean is queer!
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!
Alas, we greatly fear
That when the animals hear
That Frederick Bean is queer
They'll take him by the ear.
He'll shed a bitter tear
And shout: Oh dear, oh dear! --''Shut up!' Freddy yelled. 'All of you. Shut up! Don't you know anything? This is addressed to Frederick Bean, Esquire! Esquire, not 'is queer.' Esquire is a courtesy title, like Mister. Instead of addressing it to 'Mr. Frederick Bean,' she addressed it to 'Frederick Bean, Esquire.' It's a little more dignified that way, that's all.'
'And, boy, you could use a little more dignity right now, pig.' said the cat.
I have laughed at that particular incident for many years now, but certainly I read the Freddy books differently as an adult than I did as a child. Throughout the book, there are several incidents that may not be so exciting from the adult point of view, but were really thrilling to me as a child. As a child, I also probably took comfort in the familiar and would have used stories I had read previously to help me make sense of some of these incidents. I vaguely remember having read a picture book version of Washington Irving's The Headless Horseman, for example. So when I read about the headless horseman in Freddy and the Dragon, it was quite scary to me, but I wasn't quite as scared as I was when reading Washington Irving. Conversely, as an adult reader, I am not at all frightened by Brooks' headless horseman, but I can see the humor Brooks intended, although I cannot recall being at all amused at the headless horseman as a child. Perhaps I didn't see the humor as a child because I was too afraid, or perhaps I was simply too literal minded.
Brooks' joke is that this man is not simply headless, he has a detachable head. Brooks makes this little joke funny because the characters deliver it deadpan and two different characters make the same joke which heightens the absurd sense of it. When Freddy asks Percy for insight into the headless horseman, Percy says, "'As to this headless horseman you've talked about, it must be some trick of Jack's. Only it can't be Jack, because he hasn't got a detachable head.'" When Mr. Bean and the animals report the headless horseman to the state troopers, the officer laughs at them. Mr. Bean replies, "'There's an old story about a headless horseman up on the back road. My grandfather used to tell about folks seeing him,' said Mr. Bean. 'I don't say I believe it, but maybe somebody's using it to scare people off.'' 'Sure, sure,' said the trooper. 'Maybe this Jack guy, maybe he heard this story, and maybe he's got a detachable head, and so he figured this would be a good place to do a little robbery and racketeering, because if folks saw him they'd run, instead of shooting at him. Look, you bring me in his head, and after I've had a talk with it, maybe I'll believe your story.'"
If the headless horseman was only mildly scary to me, I can remember being truly scared of Percy, the bull, possibly because I grew up on a farm and I knew how dangerous bulls can be. When I think over the Freddy books as a series, Percy's character stands out as one of Brooks' more memorable minor characters. Certainly he is more vividly realized than many of the human characters like Mr. Margarine or even the boy with the dirty face. Percy develops in the book from a frightening bully to a good friend, and he is one of the most thorough illustrations of the morality that Brooks weaves so carefully throughout the books.
I have heard more than one person comment that the cheap perfume Freddy sprays on Percy is a tired joke since it was first performed in Freddy the Cowboy. It may indeed be an example of flagging creativity on Brooks' part, but as a child I responded to the humor when Freddy says to him:
'I've got some more perfume for you. Come on out, and let me squirt it on your other side. Boy, you'll be more popular than ever. Come on, sweetie pie. My, you do smell good!'
So perhaps the perfume is a trick that has been played before, and perhaps it is a joke that only an eight-year-old can fully appreciate, but Samuel Jackson's role in Percy's reformation is sheer creative genius. Freddy has not been able to get Percy to confess to being a criminal and so he readily agrees with the mole's plan trick the bull. Samuel buries underneath the ground and calls to Percy:
'Percy!' said the mole severely, 'You cannot see me. I am inside you. I am the voice of your conscience."
"My conscience!' Percy exclaimed. He thought a minute. 'It's funny I never heard you before."
"You have never been so wicked before,' said Samuel. "You have been rough and rude; you have been a loud-mouthed bully; but you have never been a member of a criminal gang." Percy looked all around. There was no one in sight. The voice, he thought, must be coming from inside him.
"Hey, look," the bull said. "How come I never heard of you before? I didn't even know I had a conscience. Rats! I think you're just a noise in my head."
"I am," said Samuel. "The noise of your conscience."
The bull thought a moment. "If that's so," he said, "why didn't you say anything when I went off and left my daughters? When I tossed old Briggs over the fence? When I busted into Witherspoon's oat bin?"
"I'm not a very strong and active conscience," said Samuel. "You wouldn't expect to have an active one, would you -- a fellow like you? But there are some things even a weak conscience can't take. I say there's some things even I can't take. Like becoming a gangster." Of course Samuel wasn't sure that Percy was a member of the gang that was causing all the trouble, but he thought it was a pretty safe bet. And as it turned out, he was right.
"I ain't a gangster!" said the bull indignantly. "We've just been having some fun, busting up things, and maybe swiping a little stuff --"
With that, the wall of denial is broken down and Percy begins to see himself the way the other animals see him. He may not be a grand villain in the tradition of Simon, but he plays a unique role in the Freddy books -- the villain that reforms. Brooks uses Percy to make a moral illustration and yet Brooks is able to do so without preaching at the reader. Soon the bull has made a complete transformation and he becomes such an exemplar of politeness that all of the other farm animals get caught up in the effort to be more gracious than the next one.
Jack also does not make a terribly frightening villain. He doesn't even manage the general creepiness of Mr. Golcher in Perilous Adventure or the meanness of Mrs.Guffin in Pied Piper. Jack's presence in the cave though does allow for the dragon to do more than be an entertainment piece at Jimmy Wiggs' backyard circus. The dragon may have been Brooks' solution to the dilemma of repeating himself -- once again the bad guys are holed up somewhere, how are the animals to rout them this time? While the dragon may not seem like much to the adult reader, I remember very clearly imagining myself climbing into the dragon's inside, feeding bits of rubber into the fire to make black smoke come out of its nostrils, and stealing down the path to the cave's entrance. Now, as an adult, I simply cannot fit into the dragon and I must admit to a feeling of disappointment at Freddy's behavior. Why, he leaves his post in the dragon and goes off scouting so Jack is allowed to escape! Where is the excitement in that?
In the conclusion, Jimmy Wiggs' backyard circus serves to draw together the characters and the events of the previous chapters helping to unify the plot and providing the reader with a satisfying end to the adventure. Mrs. Talcum, Mrs. Peppercorn's aunt, whom we meet at the very beginning, makes an appearance at the circus, as does Lieutenant Sparrow, the Sheriff and the prisoners, and of course, the dragon.
Mrs. Talcum, whose sneezing bouts are legendary and provide much humor at the beginning of the book, catches a ride to the circus in Mrs. Church's car. We are told that: "Mrs. Talcum's sneezes embarrassed the chauffer, for they sounded like backfires, or as if something was the matter with the engine, and he was proud of keeping the car in perfect shape. He grumbled about it later to Mrs. Church, who said: 'This car is not to be sneezed at,' and went off into a gale of laughter. But the chauffeur didn't even smile."
Brooks' little conceit of having Samuel Jackson speak from underground is revisited when Samuel poses as Astro the Magnificient, the Invisible Prophet from Outer Space. Percy decides not to have his fortune told by the voice he recognizes as the voice of his conscience since, "It's too much like me telling my own. And I wouldn't like that," and the prisoners are all told, much to their delight, that they will receive sentences of years in the Centerboro Jail. Even some characters from previous Freddy books show up to have their fortune told.
While the appearance of these characters might suggest a weakness of invention to a critical reader, their treatment is so freshly comical that their inclusion must be excused. Only the most adult among Brooks' readers could suppress a smile when Astro the Magnificient says to Miss Peebles: "'I see for you a long journey across the water. Very soon, I think. To a country where they do not speak English, where when they want to say "yes," they say "wee." Only I don't think they spell it w-e-e. I think it is spelt o-u-i. At any rate, a curious custom.'"
If you find that you were indeed able to read Miss Peebles' fortune without smiling, then I must conclude that you are among the unfortunate ones who have read twenty-six Freddy books in a row -- starting from first to last. I can only suggest as a remedy that you take a break from Freddy and when you return, begin as a child would begin -- with Freddy and the Dragon.