Piggies

PreS-K-- In an imaginative play on the fingers-and-toes game, a child's hands introduce two fat, two smart, two tall, two silly, and two wee piggies who cavort on fingertips. Personalities are established early, and children will have fun following a smart reading piggy and a fat eating piggy throughout the book. Belongings such as a teddy bear, balloon, and umbrella can be spotted from page to page, sometimes in out-of-the-way places. Large pages are a perfect backdrop for the antics, which are organized in a series of simple-phrase, double-spread contrasts of hot/cold, clean/dirty, and good--until bedtime when the naughty ones whisk down the tummy, dance on toes, then hide. Time to put them together for fat, smart, tall, silly, and wee goodnight kisses. But one smart piggy is still reading--by flashlight! All of this mischief is done up in oil and begins against a background of warm cream. Then bathing-suited piggies sizzle on bright yellow, snowball against cold blue, bubble up on squeaky-clean pink, squish in mud, behave their best on sky blue, then do their bedtime romp on darkening pages until the final kissing piggies are edged in moonglow. Brilliant colors and large pictures convey the humor to groups, while more subtle details of costume and trappings invite viewers to pore over the antics again and again. ``This little piggy . . . '' will never be the same. --Jane Saliers, Atlanta-Fulton Public Library.

Copyright 1991 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.