A good little read for your 4th or 5th grader! ( )

A group of farm animals decide to go south for the winter. I prefer the original title 'To and Again' as Freddy the pig is probably the most underused of any of the animals in this.

It took me a while to get into. It didn't feel much like a kids story, i kept having flashbacks to 'Animal Farm' which didn't help ;) .
One of the problems is that there arn't really any child characters. All of the animals except for the pig have the personalities of grownups which is why it felt a bit too grounded and the humour seemed aimed a bit older. Thats probably why the pig ends up as the centerpiece of the franchise as he's the only possible child-avatar available.

For a while things plodded along and i wondered how the author would reconcile the human world with these hyper-intelligent animals. Things came to a head in Washington DC in what seemed like pure satire but the author was now stuck with that strange turn of events and the book was the better for it.
Not much time is actually spent in florida and while my knowledge of the U.S.A isn't great i suspect there are some geographical errors here :) .
I also have to say that a couple of events towards the end would definitely have proven fatal (and smoke doesn't wake people up!) so if reading to a child make sure to point out how homicidal these animals are :P .

Overall a bit drab but there were wacky incidents that improved it as it went along. ( )

An assortment of farm animals on Mr. Bean's farm decide to migrate to Florida for the winter. The episodic chapters tell of their adventures on the way, while there, and on the way back. The animals are mostly perfect models of courtesy, honesty, respect and kindness. While most of those they meet on their journey are decent sorts as well, they do run into a few ne'er-do-wells.
This first book in the 26-volume Freddy the Pig series doesn't feature Freddy any more prominently than the other animals.
Old fashioned in some ways, but timeless in others. Elementary age kids would love to have it read to them, or to read it themselves. (And this adult enjoyed reading himself as well.) ( )

Read 1/9/2018 ( )

This first of the Freddy the Pig books -- Freddy (not yet such a dominant character) and the Bean farm animals decide to go to Florida for the winter. At this point in the series, the animals can talk among themselves, but they do not talk fluently in English with humans as they do in later stories. The illustrations are in a woodblock-art deco sort of style, very different from the line drawings of Kurt Weise which illustrate the latter books in the series. ( )