LITTLE PIG IS CAPABLE

Little Pig’s parents are fusspots. They can’t protect their little pig enough from the big bad world. It might be sunny and warm, but they swathe him in a scarf. The bathtub is an accident waiting to happen. They see in pasta a potential menace: “Sugar-dumpling,” they warble to Little Pig, “If you’re eating spaghetti please be careful. If you eat quickly you’ll get spaghetti all over yourself! You won’t be able to digest properly, and you could even choke!” So when they send Little Pig off with his Snout Troop for a hike, he is outfitted as if on an expedition to the far Hindu Kush: nose bathed in zinc oxide, glacier glasses, leggings, water wings just in case. But their worrywart radar isn’t working when they fail to notice the substitute troop leader, Ravenous, has a rack of sharp teeth in his mouth. The hike is a fiasco—Ravenous doesn’t care if the snouts eat all their food in the first five minutes (Little Pig, of course, has a whole sackful of sandwiches), or swim in the most dangerous part of the river, or get sunburned or stung by mosquitoes. It falls to Little Pig to figure out that Ravenous is a wolf in swinish hiking shorts and save the pack’s bacon. Yes, Little Pig is not only prepared, he is capable of utilizing that preparedness. Roche’s (It’s My City, 2001, etc.) bright, gawky, and very funny art makes having anxious parents seem like fun. Goofy stills of straight-armed, skinny-legged Little Pig suffering his parents’ silliness give his steady hand real appeal, rather than turning him into a party pooper. (Picture book. 4-8)