Things keep disappearing from the farm and all signs lead to the rats as the responsible party. Threatened by the farmer's plan to drive them away, the rats decide that their only hope is to cause enough damage on the farm to distract his attention from themselves. But the rats' plans are foiled by the animals on the farm who work together to protect the family. Brooks' Freddy the Detective (published 1932)? No, it's Lily F. Wesselhoeft's Torpeanuts the Tomboy, published in 1897.
There is little information available on Wesselhoeft. Born Elizabeth Foster Pope, she married Conrad Wesselhoeft, a homeopathic doctor and one of the founders of the Boston University Medical School, and lived with him and their one daughter in Boston, MA. Lily wrote approximately fifteen children's books before her death in 1919. One of her many readers was the young Walter R. Brooks, born in New York in 1886.
There are several similarities between Wesselfhoeft's books and Brooks' Freddy stories: talking animals who understand people and have distinct personalities, hidden 'lessons' on appropriate and productive behavior, and multiple plot lines. Although Wesselfhoeft's animals talk to each other they are not understood by humans. It is interesting to note that this was the case in the earliest of Brooks' books as well. It was not until The Story of Freginald that the Bean animals were understood by humans.
Wesselhoeft and Brooks both impart advice to their readers on how to deal with situations that could occur to anybody. These 'lessons' are often imparted through the animals rather then through humans. Michael Cart wrote about this technique in his book What's So Funny? Wit and Humor in American Children's Literature:
The use of animals for humorous effect--either as being true to their essential animal nature or, more typically, as anthropomprphized human surrogates--is as old as Aesop. Their primal place in literature for children is due in part, of course, to kids' natural love for creatures with fur and feathers, but in larger part is due to authors' understanding that most kids are not mature enough to laugh at themselves, the necessary distance of age and the framework of experience having not yet visited their lives. Put the kids into animal skin, however, and there is suddenly enough margin for mirth.Although Brooks and Wesselhoeft use their animal characters in a similar manner, Wesselhoeft uses humans almost as frequently. Wesselhoeft's books have children, and, at least in the books I've read, none of them have ever disappeared. This is an obvious contrast to the Freddy books.
A striking difference between the authors' works is the range of settings and characters. As we all know, Freddy and his friends could always be found at the Bean Farm in Centerboro, NY (unless they happened to be on vacation in Florida or the North Pole). The important phrase in the previous sentence was "Freddy and his friends," a returning set of characters with whom we are familiar. Wesselhoeft's books, however, were not a series: they were individual stories, varying in setting and characters. Many of her settings are similar to Brooks', for example Torpeanuts the Tomboy is set on a farm in rural New England. Although Wesselhoeft does not have many returning characters, there are occasional references to people from other books.
Torpeanuts the Tomboy is the book that I discussed at the convention and will talk about now. The book has two main plots. The first concerns a little girl who has just moved to the farm to live with her relatives since her mother has died. We read about her adjustment to her new life which includes going to the local school, where another subplot is introduced, Torpeanuts. Torpeanuts is a tomboy who is separate from the other children at the beginning of the book, though by the end they have all learned how to get along. The other plot focuses more on the animals. The villainous rats have been pestering the farmer and his family to such an extent that they decide to bring in ferrets to chase away the rats. The rats, as you can imagine, are not overjoyed upon hearing this news, so, led by their leaders Lieutenant Nipper and Squealer, they devise a plan to distract the farmer by burning down the barn. Fortunately the horse Ironsides and the heifer overhear the rats planning and come up with a way to foil the rats--I won't tell you how in case you decide to read the book!
There are a few other details in the book which are interesting since they sound oddly familiar: Whenever the animals meet, they do so in the barn. There is a large family of hens. The rooster is full of hot air, talking bravely but leaving when danger actually approaches. By this point the parallels must be obvious. Was Lily Wesselhoeft an influence on Walter Brooks? I hope to have more to say about this at the next convention.
Now that my important paper is done I shall turn my attention to the one due tomorrow for my Shakespeare class.
Aladdine Joroff is a past president and newsletter editor of the Friends of Freddy. She is also that rarest of creatures, a liberal arts student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has just completed her freshman year.