Freddy
and the
Bean Home News
Once again Freddy and his friends on the Bean Farm take an active part in the life of the community. They not only help materially - and in strange and unusual ways - to add to the scrap iron collection, but with Freddy as leader and chief instigator, stir up the citizens of Centerboro to assert their rights.
This is the tenth story by Walter R. Brooks in which Freddy and the animals on the Bean Farm have amusing, exciting and wondrous adventures. The rollicking humor and homely simple philosophy of these tales appeal to adults as much as to children. Kurt Wiese's delightful drawings add to the fun.
Here is Freddy's rewrite of Paul Revere's Ride:
"Listen, my children, while I discourse
Of the midnight ride of Hank, the horse.
'Twas in April, nineteen forty and three.
Robert and Sniffy and Georgie and me,
With Jinx, our leader, to set the course.
It was twelve by the village clock
When he crossed the bridge into Centerb'ro
town.
Then some of the folks got an awful shock
When Jinx climbed up on the back fence rail
And let out a terrible piercing wail
That shook the leaves of the maples down.
You know the rest. In the books you have read
How the wakened townsfolk jumped from bed,
How they fired their skillets and pans and pots
At the voice that came from their garden plots,
A cry of defiance and not of fear
Although the barrage was pretty severe.
And the scrap brought home from the ride of
Hank's
Was received by Mr. Bean with thanks.
Published in 1943.
[back]