Books by Booklist Authors: Michael Cart’s Talking Animals and Others
By Gillian Engberg

Even if they have never picked up a Freddy the Pig book, readers of Michael Cart’s Carte Blanche column, a favorite of Booklist subscribers for nearly 15 years, have more than a glancing familiarity with the famous porcine sleuth. In addition to the always insightful musings on young-adult literature’s past, present, and future, Cart’s columns have included frequent, heartfelt references to the animal residents of Bean Farm, including a few entirely Freddy-focused tributes, such as “Hog Heaven,” which ran in Booklist’s March 15, 1998, issue, or “Freddy the Detective,” in the May 1, 2002, issue. Yet these columns were just a preview of the labor of love that has occupied Cart for decades: a critical biography of Freddy’s creator, Walter R. Brooks.

Twenty-five years in the making, Cart’s Talking Animals and Others: The Life and Work of Walter R. Brooks, Creator of Freddy the Pig (reviewed in the December 1, 2008, issue of Booklist) combines a thoroughly researched, evenhanded biography of Brooks with Cart’s critical analysis of the author’s work, with particular emphasis on the Freddy books. Cart says, though, that more than anything else, the book is a gesture of gratitude to Brooks.

“I wanted to thank him for what his books meant to me,” Cart says, speaking by telephone from his Columbus, Indiana, home. “I was one of those kids who found a place of sanctuary in the public library and in books. Walter had the gift of creating a whole world that I found much more agreeable than the real world, and I couldn’t wait to get there. At night, I would imagine that my bed could fly and was going to carry me off to Bean Farm. I found the best friend of my whole life in Freddy.”

Researching a hero can bring unwelcome discoveries. Did Cart worry about what he would uncover as he delved into the details of Brooks’ life? “I was extremely nervous,” he says, “but my feelings about Walter didn’t change over the course of writing the book. He became more human than he’d ever been before, and while I adore him for the gift of the Freddy books, I realize that I would have liked him very much as a human being. I think we have a similar sense of humor. There are inevitable differences in what the Germans call Weltanschauung—a person’s worldview. I think he might have been a little more misanthropic than I am. Certainly much less sentimental. All that aside, I am absolutely confident that we would have hit it off. And it occurred to me that what I have basically done is to reinvent myself as Walter R. Brooks. Not consciously, but as I look at my life now and as I look at the life that he led, I see so many similarities; it’s just extraordinary.”