Porter's greatest strength is her detailed and accurate description of nature. When her publishers wanted to eliminate much of the nature lore, she refused. Her audience was accustomed to the local colorists' precise delineations of unusual regional characteristics; Porter focused the same careful scrutiny upon the birds, plants, and insects of an Indiana swamp.

Because the swamp creatures function much like human characters, Porter's anthropomorphism is not surprising, although it is less pronounced than in The Song of the Cardinal, where the birds' story is as important as that of Abram and his wife. Nevertheless, in Freckles the swamp creatures are given human feelings, and the frogs speak at strategic times, providing sound advice for Freckles.

An obvious danger in anthropomorphism is sentimentality, but Porter's sentimentality arises also from her didactic purpose and her use of the standard techniques of stage melodrama. Most of her characters are stereotyped...