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bookishheather's review
4.0
Freddy is a golden hamster who can read and write. Professor Fleischkopf (literally "meathead") wants to hamster-nap him and dissect his brain in order to forward his eeevil scientific research. Aided by a team of interspecies roommates, Freddy flees his happy home in order to stay one step ahead of Fleischkopf. By the end of the book, I think you'll agree this episode is quite a close shave.
Originally I purchased this book at Goodwill because the two guinea pig characters, Enrico and Caruso, piqued my interest. In the estimation of the main character, they are unintelligent and vain, stemming from their love of theatrics and music. Not a kind filter for these two characters, but there were some delightful drawings of them in the book.
One funny moment comes when Freddy is looking to send his master an email. Freddy's owner has a Macintosh, so they believe they need another Macintosh:
Those Graywhiskers! Not only did they promptly agree to keep us supplied with food in our abandoned house, but they actually managed, by exploiting their far-flunt connections, to locate a house with a computer in it. Graywhisker the Great brought us the news in person.
"But is it a Macintosh?" I asked.
He nodded. "Our informant swears it is."
As an old-school Mac user, I still marvel at how in the last ten years Macs have gone from "oh yeah, those guys" to being considered one of the "big three" tech companies.
Another interesting moment comes at the end, when Professor Fleischkopf appears on a television show that is supposedly "debating" experimentation of animals. As a newspaper later summarizes, the scientist "goes insane on live TV." Except as an adult, the television sequence seems exceedingly unbelievable. (But then again, I'm reading a book about a hamster that reads and writes...) Clearly, the moral is that animal experimentation is bad—and I agree with that message, but this book presents that moral in a really flimsy way.
Overall, this is a pretty creative story, better for the younger readers than me. But once in a while I appreciate reading a fluffy book or two. And if animals are the main characters, all the better!
Originally I purchased this book at Goodwill because the two guinea pig characters, Enrico and Caruso, piqued my interest. In the estimation of the main character, they are unintelligent and vain, stemming from their love of theatrics and music. Not a kind filter for these two characters, but there were some delightful drawings of them in the book.
One funny moment comes when Freddy is looking to send his master an email. Freddy's owner has a Macintosh, so they believe they need another Macintosh:
Those Graywhiskers! Not only did they promptly agree to keep us supplied with food in our abandoned house, but they actually managed, by exploiting their far-flunt connections, to locate a house with a computer in it. Graywhisker the Great brought us the news in person.
"But is it a Macintosh?" I asked.
He nodded. "Our informant swears it is."
As an old-school Mac user, I still marvel at how in the last ten years Macs have gone from "oh yeah, those guys" to being considered one of the "big three" tech companies.
Another interesting moment comes at the end, when Professor Fleischkopf appears on a television show that is supposedly "debating" experimentation of animals. As a newspaper later summarizes, the scientist "goes insane on live TV." Except as an adult, the television sequence seems exceedingly unbelievable. (But then again, I'm reading a book about a hamster that reads and writes...) Clearly, the moral is that animal experimentation is bad—and I agree with that message, but this book presents that moral in a really flimsy way.
Overall, this is a pretty creative story, better for the younger readers than me. But once in a while I appreciate reading a fluffy book or two. And if animals are the main characters, all the better!
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