Review
This was one of five Newbery Honor books in 1922 otherwise I likely would never have encountered it - and what a pleasant little surprise it has been! It is a funny, rousing, charming and very satisfying little adventure!
Little Freddie befriends the little hunchback, Toby Littleback, who owns the tobacco shop down the street from his home. Freddie is instantly drawn to Toby and the other characters who populate the shop and surrounding neighborhood - sweet, wistful Aunt Amanda, the two Old Codgers, and the Churchwarden to name just a few. Freddie becomes a permanent fixture at the shop until one day Toby leaves him in charge with only one admonition - not to smoke the tobacco from the jar shaped like a Chinaman's head! Having developed a minor obsession with this very object it proves to be too great a temptation and what results is an amazing little adventure for Freddie and his new friends.
The plot is a bizarre, but engaging amalgam of elements from various other children's fantasy adventures (Wizard of Oz and Narnia are the first to come to my mind). But having said that I've never really read anything quite like it. I think most of this was owing to good, solid writing by William Bowen - who I don't know a single thing about! I loved the characters and found the dialogue to be really clever and funny. I can see how a child of the 1920s would have been very delighted by this and, frankly, I think children of today might enjoy it as well.
Little Freddie befriends the little hunchback, Toby Littleback, who owns the tobacco shop down the street from his home. Freddie is instantly drawn to Toby and the other characters who populate the shop and surrounding neighborhood - sweet, wistful Aunt Amanda, the two Old Codgers, and the Churchwarden to name just a few. Freddie becomes a permanent fixture at the shop until one day Toby leaves him in charge with only one admonition - not to smoke the tobacco from the jar shaped like a Chinaman's head! Having developed a minor obsession with this very object it proves to be too great a temptation and what results is an amazing little adventure for Freddie and his new friends.
The plot is a bizarre, but engaging amalgam of elements from various other children's fantasy adventures (Wizard of Oz and Narnia are the first to come to my mind). But having said that I've never really read anything quite like it. I think most of this was owing to good, solid writing by William Bowen - who I don't know a single thing about! I loved the characters and found the dialogue to be really clever and funny. I can see how a child of the 1920s would have been very delighted by this and, frankly, I think children of today might enjoy it as well.
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