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Freddy the Pig #24
Freddy and Simon the Dictator
Detective, politician, ambassador to the Martians―whatever the situation requests, Freddy fits the bill. There’s never a dull moment for Freddy and the other animals on Bean Farm, who are “as fast-mouthed and sharply funny as the Marx Brothers, as aphoristic and gimlet-eyed as astute as Noel Coward, and yet always affectionate and forgiving” (The Globe and Mail). These beloved classics―childhood favorites of Overlook publisher Peter Mayer―are available now for the first time as Overlook paperbacks, as well as in handsome hardcover editions. Freddy the Pig, the “Renaissance Pig” (The New York Times) of Bean Farm, is back to thrill his fans of all ages in facsimile editions of these all-American children’s classics. In Freddy and Simon The Dictator, warning had been printed in the Bean Home News and the Centerboro Guardian, but nobody paid much attention to them. An animal revolt? “Preposterous!” said the Beans and all the other humans. But it’s true―and Simon the rat is determined to turn the farm into a dictatorship. Mr. Camphor has been persuaded (much against his better judgment) to run for governor of New York State, Herb Garble shows up, Jinx defects to the enemy (or does he?), and Freddy―that inimitable pig!―goes to work as the political boss of Otesaraga County. Freddy and Simon the Dictator is classic Brooks, in which the master of barnyard hilarity has a lot of fun satirizing politics and―especially―politicians.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1956
2 people are currently reading
81 people want to read
About the author
Walter Rollin Brooks
51 books64 followersWalter Rollin Brooks (January 9, 1886 – August 17, 1958) was an American writer best remembered for his short stories and children's books, particularly those about Freddy the Pig and other anthropomorphic animal inhabitants of the "Bean farm" in upstate New York.
Born in Rome, New York, Brooks attended college at the University of Rochester and subsequently studied homeopathic medicine in New York City. He dropped out after two years, however, and returned to Rochester, where he married his first wife, Anne Shepard, in 1909. Brooks found employment with an advertising agency in Utica, and then "retired" in 1911, evidently because he came into a considerable inheritance. His retirement was not permanent: in 1917, he went to work for the American Red Cross and later did editorial work for several magazines, including The New Yorker.
In 1940, Brooks turned to his own writing for his full-time occupation. Walter married his second wife, Dorothy Collins, following the death of Anne in 1952.
The first works Brooks published were poems and short stories. His short story "Ed Takes the Pledge" about a talking horse was the basis for the 1960s television comedy series Mister Ed (credit for creating the characters is given in each episode to "Walter Brooks"). His most enduring works, however, are the 26 books he wrote about Freddy the Pig and his friends.
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Born in Rome, New York, Brooks attended college at the University of Rochester and subsequently studied homeopathic medicine in New York City. He dropped out after two years, however, and returned to Rochester, where he married his first wife, Anne Shepard, in 1909. Brooks found employment with an advertising agency in Utica, and then "retired" in 1911, evidently because he came into a considerable inheritance. His retirement was not permanent: in 1917, he went to work for the American Red Cross and later did editorial work for several magazines, including The New Yorker.
In 1940, Brooks turned to his own writing for his full-time occupation. Walter married his second wife, Dorothy Collins, following the death of Anne in 1952.
The first works Brooks published were poems and short stories. His short story "Ed Takes the Pledge" about a talking horse was the basis for the 1960s television comedy series Mister Ed (credit for creating the characters is given in each episode to "Walter Brooks"). His most enduring works, however, are the 26 books he wrote about Freddy the Pig and his friends.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
June 20, 2021
Freddy and Simon the Dictator is according to a Walter Brooks fan page is a parody of "Animal Farm" which I did not realize when I read it the age of 9 approximately 10 years before I read Orwell's novel. At that age, the word "dictator" evoked Hitler in my mind and my reaction to the book was that it was a highly inept reflection on Europe's experience with fascism. My confidence in Walter Brooks who had been a great favourite of mine for the previous 18 months was seriously undermined. I soon moved on to other writers. I had in any event become too old for Freddy.
Despite the fact that this novel is clearly one of the weaker ones in the Freddy series, it has a rather good ending. After Freddy has led a group of good animals in a revolution that puts an end to the dictatorship of Simon the Rat,the state legislature of New York decides to give the vote to animals which enables to the Republicans to win the Governorship and a majority in the state congress in Albany. As Brooks observed giving the animals the vote was the only thing that could have ever allowed the Republicans to win in New York during the 1950s when the humans were so overwhelmingly democrat in the Empire State. Brooks unquestionably had a point. For Donald Trump to carry the state in the second decade of the 21st century, it would probably be necessary to give the vote to the insects.
Walter R. Brooks loopy humour played well with both children and adults during the 1960s. Brooks' series of short stories about a talking horse with a taste for alcohol spawned the wildly successful Mr. Ed. television show.
I regret to say that I have had no luck trying to persuade either of my two children to read any of the Freddy books whose charm does not seem to have survived into the 21st century.
Despite the fact that this novel is clearly one of the weaker ones in the Freddy series, it has a rather good ending. After Freddy has led a group of good animals in a revolution that puts an end to the dictatorship of Simon the Rat,the state legislature of New York decides to give the vote to animals which enables to the Republicans to win the Governorship and a majority in the state congress in Albany. As Brooks observed giving the animals the vote was the only thing that could have ever allowed the Republicans to win in New York during the 1950s when the humans were so overwhelmingly democrat in the Empire State. Brooks unquestionably had a point. For Donald Trump to carry the state in the second decade of the 21st century, it would probably be necessary to give the vote to the insects.
Walter R. Brooks loopy humour played well with both children and adults during the 1960s. Brooks' series of short stories about a talking horse with a taste for alcohol spawned the wildly successful Mr. Ed. television show.
I regret to say that I have had no luck trying to persuade either of my two children to read any of the Freddy books whose charm does not seem to have survived into the 21st century.
January 2, 2019
FREDDY AND SIMON THE DICTATOR (1956) is a (not entirely successful) reworking of the plot of an earlier novel, Brooks’s delightful FREDDY THE POLITICIAN (1939). In POLITICIAN, a family of smooth-talking Washington woodpeckers persuade some Centerboro farm animals to revolt against their human masters. Assisted by Simon and his family of rats, the woodpeckers succeed, for a brief period, in placing animals in control of the Bean and neighboring farms. In DICTATOR, Simon, back from Montana, has more grandiose ambitions. Assisted by Mr. Garble, Centerboro’s serial malefactor, Simon plots to become supreme leader of all Central New York farms. (Why in the world would Garble would want animals to subjugate fellow human beings?) Though DICTATOR has much Freddy magic, it is more talky, violent, and overtly didactic than its predecessor.
DICTATOR opens with a trivial act of animal insubordination. Freddy and Jinx find Mr. Bean spanking two young rabbits, 6 Jr. and 14, who have stolen lettuce from the garden. (In the Freddy series, rabbits are so prolific that they have numbers rather than names.) The juveniles are so unrepentant that Freddy and Jinx visit their mother. Brandishing a recipe for rabbit stew, allegedly torn from Mrs. Bean’s cookbook, Mrs. 6 complains that the Beans have eaten her husband. Since the Beans are kind to all animals, Jinx and Freddy are mystified.
Freddy and Jinx learn that the disaffected rabbit family is only the tip of an iceberg. A rabbit employed by Freddy’s detective agency tells them of a nighttime meeting at the Grimby house, in the Big Woods. (The ruined Grimby house is a magnet for evil-doers.) Echoing the pig revolutionaries in Orwell’s ANIMAL FARM, an amplified voice (Mr. Garble with a microphone) goads the animals to overthrow human oppressors: “But if you have the will to burst your shackles and enter into the glorious life of free animals, then I will show you the way” (21). Uncle Solomon, the screech owl, explains Simon’s agenda: “When the signal is given, they’ll come down and drive the farmers from their farms. They’re going to start right in the neighborhood around Centerboro. As soon as the farmers are driven off, they’ll turn over the management of the farm to those of the farm animals who have joined up with their organization, and they’ll go on to the next farm. They believe in a year, they’ll have the whole state under animal control’” (77). The Bean farm, Freddy and Jinx realize, is in serious danger.
In contrast to POLITICIAN, whose animal revolutionaries are soon thwarted, animals and humans in DICTATOR fight with shockingly savagery: “A man was standing on a rock in the middle of a hayfield and laying about him with a hoe. Around him, the grass kept moving and now and then small brownish animals came into sight as they leaped up toward him” (165). (Has the reader wandered into Daphne DuMaurier’s story, with rabbits instead of birds?) “It was the time which historians of the revolt now call the Reign of Terror. Cars were stopped and overturned all over the county; farmers, starting out to do their morning chores, were driven back into the house. . . several barns were set fire to. . . . A car with a black dog at the wheel roared up Main Street and knocked over several pedestrians” (139). (A vehicle used as a lethal weapon? Are we in Stephen King’s MR. MERCEDES?) Customarily, Centerboro villains do little serious damage before their expulsion or reformation. The fictional world of DICTATOR, however, is alarmingly different from that of other Freddy books. Because the violence in DICTATOR is so vicious, I felt as if Brooks had broken an implied contract with Freddy fans.
While the animals are revolting, Mr. Camphor asks for Freddy’s help in convincing a delegation of politicians NOT to nominate him for governor of New York State. (Why can’t Camphor just say no?) Senator Blunder, Judge Anguish, Mr. Slurp, and other caricatured politicians exemplify a favorite Brooks target: “’Political speeches,” explains Judge Anguish, “are not supposed to say anything important. The perfect political speech expresses a lot of noble but very vague sentiments in extremely high-flown language’” (41). Hoping that the delegation will give up and find another nominee, Mr. Camphor paints his face with war paint and hides out with a band of embarrassingly stereotypical Indians. When this ploy fails, Mr. Camphor attempts to discourage his supporters by proposing that animals vote. Agreeing to be Republican candidate for governor, Mr. Camphor wholeheartedly embraces the animal suffrage, the platform he had initially proposed as a ruse. In a long speech to Centerboro animals, Camphor asks them to reject Simon’s dictatorship and exercise the American right to vote. Echoing Orwell’s anti-Communist message in ANIMAL FARM, Camphor tells the revolutionaries that, by overthrowing farmers, they would become slaves of a worse master: “’You will have no freedom of choice and very little of action. You will be worse off than you are now’” (180). Since animals in the Freddy series are metaphorically children, DICTATOR encourages young readers to participate in American political institutions. Alas, Camphor’s long campaign speeches are tediously didactic.
Because DICTATOR offers Brooks’s “constant readers” many familiar satisfactions, I do not want to end on a negative note. As always, Freddy defeats evil-doers with the help of small, easily overlooked animals—in this case, Jacob the Wasp and Horace the Bumblebee. On his out-of-control bicycle, Freddy is, as is often the case, inadvertently heroic: he leads dog allies against a pack of wolves. One of my favorite Centerboro institutions is its cozy jail: Mr. Bean, incarcerated trumped up theft charges, does not want to leave his croquet game on the prison lawn when the charges are dropped. As expected, Freddy wears outlandish human disguises. Even in the midst of crises, Freddy takes time to write literal-minded poetry: “The teeth are thirty-two in number,/ You’d think so many would encumber/ The mouth, but they fit neatly in. . . “ (188). Though I enjoyed FREDDY AND SIMON THE DICTATOR the least of any Freddy book I have read, I savored these and other delicious Freddy tropes. If DICTATOR were the only Freddy book I owned, I would read it again and again.
DICTATOR opens with a trivial act of animal insubordination. Freddy and Jinx find Mr. Bean spanking two young rabbits, 6 Jr. and 14, who have stolen lettuce from the garden. (In the Freddy series, rabbits are so prolific that they have numbers rather than names.) The juveniles are so unrepentant that Freddy and Jinx visit their mother. Brandishing a recipe for rabbit stew, allegedly torn from Mrs. Bean’s cookbook, Mrs. 6 complains that the Beans have eaten her husband. Since the Beans are kind to all animals, Jinx and Freddy are mystified.
Freddy and Jinx learn that the disaffected rabbit family is only the tip of an iceberg. A rabbit employed by Freddy’s detective agency tells them of a nighttime meeting at the Grimby house, in the Big Woods. (The ruined Grimby house is a magnet for evil-doers.) Echoing the pig revolutionaries in Orwell’s ANIMAL FARM, an amplified voice (Mr. Garble with a microphone) goads the animals to overthrow human oppressors: “But if you have the will to burst your shackles and enter into the glorious life of free animals, then I will show you the way” (21). Uncle Solomon, the screech owl, explains Simon’s agenda: “When the signal is given, they’ll come down and drive the farmers from their farms. They’re going to start right in the neighborhood around Centerboro. As soon as the farmers are driven off, they’ll turn over the management of the farm to those of the farm animals who have joined up with their organization, and they’ll go on to the next farm. They believe in a year, they’ll have the whole state under animal control’” (77). The Bean farm, Freddy and Jinx realize, is in serious danger.
In contrast to POLITICIAN, whose animal revolutionaries are soon thwarted, animals and humans in DICTATOR fight with shockingly savagery: “A man was standing on a rock in the middle of a hayfield and laying about him with a hoe. Around him, the grass kept moving and now and then small brownish animals came into sight as they leaped up toward him” (165). (Has the reader wandered into Daphne DuMaurier’s story, with rabbits instead of birds?) “It was the time which historians of the revolt now call the Reign of Terror. Cars were stopped and overturned all over the county; farmers, starting out to do their morning chores, were driven back into the house. . . several barns were set fire to. . . . A car with a black dog at the wheel roared up Main Street and knocked over several pedestrians” (139). (A vehicle used as a lethal weapon? Are we in Stephen King’s MR. MERCEDES?) Customarily, Centerboro villains do little serious damage before their expulsion or reformation. The fictional world of DICTATOR, however, is alarmingly different from that of other Freddy books. Because the violence in DICTATOR is so vicious, I felt as if Brooks had broken an implied contract with Freddy fans.
While the animals are revolting, Mr. Camphor asks for Freddy’s help in convincing a delegation of politicians NOT to nominate him for governor of New York State. (Why can’t Camphor just say no?) Senator Blunder, Judge Anguish, Mr. Slurp, and other caricatured politicians exemplify a favorite Brooks target: “’Political speeches,” explains Judge Anguish, “are not supposed to say anything important. The perfect political speech expresses a lot of noble but very vague sentiments in extremely high-flown language’” (41). Hoping that the delegation will give up and find another nominee, Mr. Camphor paints his face with war paint and hides out with a band of embarrassingly stereotypical Indians. When this ploy fails, Mr. Camphor attempts to discourage his supporters by proposing that animals vote. Agreeing to be Republican candidate for governor, Mr. Camphor wholeheartedly embraces the animal suffrage, the platform he had initially proposed as a ruse. In a long speech to Centerboro animals, Camphor asks them to reject Simon’s dictatorship and exercise the American right to vote. Echoing Orwell’s anti-Communist message in ANIMAL FARM, Camphor tells the revolutionaries that, by overthrowing farmers, they would become slaves of a worse master: “’You will have no freedom of choice and very little of action. You will be worse off than you are now’” (180). Since animals in the Freddy series are metaphorically children, DICTATOR encourages young readers to participate in American political institutions. Alas, Camphor’s long campaign speeches are tediously didactic.
Because DICTATOR offers Brooks’s “constant readers” many familiar satisfactions, I do not want to end on a negative note. As always, Freddy defeats evil-doers with the help of small, easily overlooked animals—in this case, Jacob the Wasp and Horace the Bumblebee. On his out-of-control bicycle, Freddy is, as is often the case, inadvertently heroic: he leads dog allies against a pack of wolves. One of my favorite Centerboro institutions is its cozy jail: Mr. Bean, incarcerated trumped up theft charges, does not want to leave his croquet game on the prison lawn when the charges are dropped. As expected, Freddy wears outlandish human disguises. Even in the midst of crises, Freddy takes time to write literal-minded poetry: “The teeth are thirty-two in number,/ You’d think so many would encumber/ The mouth, but they fit neatly in. . . “ (188). Though I enjoyed FREDDY AND SIMON THE DICTATOR the least of any Freddy book I have read, I savored these and other delicious Freddy tropes. If DICTATOR were the only Freddy book I owned, I would read it again and again.
November 13, 2008
We have listened to the ENTIRE series. The narrator is FANTASTIC!! While some are a bit better than others, there isn't one we didn't LOVE. One of the all time classic series in children's literature - I CAN'T believe I had never heard of them before!
November 9, 2022
Freddy and the Red Scare. The central thing is this: throughout the series, Brooks has done a good job of treading lightly over the essential contradictions of his world: that these are sentient animals, and yet they're still, if you think about it even for a second, slaves, and the idea of people eating them or them eating each other is just gruesome. But that stuff is always just background, and it never intrudes on the central narrative. Well, not here. Brooks is more explicitly ideological by a very wide margin than he's ever been before, and when you stress-test this stuff...well, it does NOT hold up.
Still sporadically entertaining, though. Superior to its immediate predecessor and its successors.
Still sporadically entertaining, though. Superior to its immediate predecessor and its successors.
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July 29, 2024Be aware that the book mentions Native Americans as Red Indians and includes stereotypes. I think a parent or teacher should talk about these stereotypes and why they are inappropriate and disrespectful to Native Americans.
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May 3, 2022Everyone says this series is funny. But I'm not getting the jokes... so I'm calling it quits. It could be me, though. So take that into account.
June 16, 2022
I love this book, my favorite of the entire series. Simon is back to his old tricks and he takes over the countryside. It is a great book and in my opinion the best book in the entire series!
October 12, 2024
3-1/2 rounded up to 4. Not the best in the series, but still enjoyable.
September 2, 2008
Puts Animal Farm to shame
September 4, 2012
One of my favorite political satires of all time.
October 9, 2019
I liked it.
March 15, 2019
i liked it
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews