I was compelled to read Freddy Goes Camping by Mari Ness’s appreciation Pigs! With! Ghosts! at tor.com, which covers pretty much everything that struck me about this book — the who-knows-where-it-will-veer-nextness of the plot, the slight accidental (I think) creepiness (Pig! Eating! Bacon! / Very! Ill-advised! DDT protocols!), the odd mix of mild instruction (both moral and practical, e.g., how to row quietly across a lake) and gentle humor, etc.
The tor.com piece doesn’t cover my astonishment at this late date, on stumbling across a long-running and apparently well-regarded children’s book series of which I had never heard. It feels to me like suddenly learning about the existence of The Wind in the Willows (perhaps the clearest antecedent of Freddy) or E. B. White’s (roughly contemporaneous) kids’ classics Stuart Little, et al. I’m decidedly grateful to Ness and tor.com for edumahcating me in this regard.
needs more demons? nuh-uh.
Needs More Demons Or Not 