HOGWOOD STEPS OUT

What happens when spring strikes the fancy of a 600-pound pig with personality and panache? Confined to his pen all winter, Christopher Hogwood smells the rich, inviting mud. Beguiled by sunlight, the light-footed porker opens the gate and heads to the garden for a light lettuce snack, until a frustrated gardener wards him off. Unruffled, Christopher Hogwood follows his nose to the lawn, which he proceeds to roll up like a carpet with his snout. When the distraught lawn owner chases him with a broom, the mud-mad piggy trots toward a “deep, deep earth smell” and discovers an excavator at work. Leaving chaos in his wake, Christopher Hogwood seems content to ‘let” the nice policeman lure him home with a bucket of apples. Life is good. Based on experiences with his own pig, Mansfield spins this affectionate paean with tongue firmly in cheek, while Moser’s stunning watercolors capture Christopher Hogwood at his most luminous: dreaming innocently in his pen; indifferently munching lettuce; snout-deep in freshly plowed dirt; mud-splattered and insouciant. Some pig indeed! (Picture book. 4-8)