Customer Reviews:
 Freddie Fernortner Fearless First Grader November 12, 2007
These books are terrific books! My boys LOVE the stories and there is a "cliff hanger" at the end of each chapter. They hate to have to stop reading (or me reading it to them) at night to go to bed! A MUST HAVE in your child's collection!
 Predictable yet entertaining June 26, 2007
This was one of the first books that I read aloud with my six-year-old daughter, who was already an avid reader of the Junie B. Jones series. She wanted a diversion from this series, so we turned to Freddie on a whim.
To begin with, this book (and I believe all of the others so far)is about the title character, who is a first-grader and his two friends, Darla and Chip, and Freddie's gum-chewing cat, Mr. Chewy. This particular book is about how the threesome creates--with stunning (and yet implausible) engineering skills--a flying bicycle. The bike carries them all over their hometown and beyond, and each chapter ends with a hair-raising cliff-hanger, that is always resolved in the next few paragraphs of the follwing chapter.
On the good side, Jonathan Rand truly has a way with the pacing of his story, and all of his years writing the "American" and "Michigan Chillers" series pays off in his ability to create a suspenseful tone. Rand is able to keep young readers on the edge of their seats without giving them true scares to keep them up at night.
My complaint about the book (and let it be said it's MY complaint-not my daughter's) is that first of all, the cliffhangers and the plot in general tend to be rather predictable, even for a moderately savvy young reader. More importantly, however, is the problem of characterization. Freddie, Darla, and Chip are all interchangeable, with very little distinction making them realistic first-graders. (Perhaps this is because my daughter loves the Junie B. Jones series, which is right-on when it comes to nailing the personality and dialogue of first-graders and characterization in general.)
All in all, Freddie Fernortner is a fun diversion for your child, perhaps especially for reluctant readers who are seeking nothing but plot, but if you're seeking a classic children's book in the making, look elsewhere.
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