POPPLETON IN FALL

This latest in an early-reading series from Rylant, featuring the everyday adventures of Poppleton the pig, is as wry and supple as other entries, with the added charm of familiarity. In three stories, Poppleton’s pal Cherry Sue serves as a safety net to the pig’s minor misadventures. The first is a bit of nonsense involving geese flying south; Poppleton invites them in for cookies, but chatting and serving so many geese exhausts him so that he can only utter gibberish when he drops by Cherry Sue’s, and succumbs to a nap. When Poppleton seeks a new winter coat, Zacko the ferret haberdasher insults the pig for his rotundity. Cherry Sue, reminding Poppleton that Zacko is a ferret, after all, with a radically different perspective on big and small, gives her friend a catalog for big and tall pigs. Lastly, Cherry Sue saves Poppleton’s bacon at the Lion’s Club pancake breakfast. If the prose invites a merry, humorous reading, Teague, hitting the illustrator’s equivalent of a perfect stride, provides wonderful scenes that conduct beginning readers through the story. (Picture book. 2-7)