PIGS MIGHT FLY

Can teen pig Lily realize her dream to fly with the power of science?

Lily’s engineer father, Professor Fatchops, has long been working on powered flight, but the government has other priorities. Lily and her younger cousin Archie secretly take up the task of creating a plane that doesn’t need magic to stay aloft. Just as she’s one model away from success, warthogs from the wilds west of the mountains attack in aircraft. With a few tweaks, Lily has a working plane ready to answer the warthogs’ next attack. Her actions are greeted with acclaim, but when her secret’s revealed, her father’s angry outburst sends Lily on another mission…to try to reason with the warthogs. What she finds over the mountains is a magical surprise—and a terrifying threat on both physical and supernatural fronts. Abadzis sets his piggie parable in a steampunk-y world that looks a lot like early-20th-century America at its outset. Experienced readers will easily predict the tale’s trajectory, as it follows in the trotters of fantasy comics past, which means it also acts as a nice primer for middle graders just starting out in the genre. Dye’s colorful artwork fleshes out both the anthropomorphic pigs, clothing them in period garb that’s filled out with very humanlike physiques, and their world, which expands impressively once Lily reaches the dominion of the warthogs.

Lily’s fans will look forward to the sequel set up at the close.