THE PIG WITH ONE NOSTRIL

Lampell's pig is not only short a nostril but has a mopey disposition to boot, and in fact the anatomical anomaly is merely a symbol for his general failure to sit up and take notice. Until one day he runs into ""a thing that wasn't a pig"" (revealed by Parnall as a snappy green frog on otherwise black and white pages) who urges him to look around and brings him an orange flower (second spot of color) to sniff. That's all it takes for a ""loud pop"" and a ""magic thing"" to happen, and he becomes a pig with two nostrils in a newly varicolored field. Even though Parnall's crisp, spare landscapes are all alike, his rear-end-first introduction to the pig population attracts attention, and his green, paunchy frog commands it; the story, however, is just a particularly mechanical and truncated example of those platitudinous fables that writers for grownups toss off for children. And the younger the child the less he needs this message.