BIG PIG

There comes a time in every life when it’s appropriate to pull up stakes and move from the family home. Like, say, you’re a pig who has attained porkerhood and takes up a bit too much space in the farmer’s living room. In Doyle’s gentle tale of the sometimes-rocky road to independence, the farmer squires the big pig to some pleasing new domiciles, but the pig finds them cold and lonely after the security of hearth and home. So he waddles back to the old place. In a last attempt, the farmer takes the pig far, far away to what looks like, in Bendall-Brunello’s cheerful watercolors, a pig commune. But it’s late when the farmer starts homeward and he gets lost in the forest. Who should save his skin but Pig, who is up to his waddling tricks again. Young readers will be comforted to know that they can always waddle home, even when they’ve grown to be big critters themselves, and the world out there seems cold and lonely. (Picture book. 3-6)