If You Give a Pig a Pancake

July 1, 1998
PreS-Gr 2-This delightful story continues the playfulness found in its predecessors, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie (1985) and If You Give a Moose a Muffin (1991, both HarperCollins). Here, a little girl is the patient hostess to a demanding piglet, whose myriad requests lead them from the kitchen table to the bathtub to the backyard. Along the way, the endearing porker puts on a pair of tap shoes, gets her picture taken balancing on top of the living room furniture, prepares a stack of mail to send to her friends, and builds and decorates a tree house. Preschoolers and beginning readers will enjoy spotting the objects mentioned in the story. Beginning with the cover illustration of the piglet daintily perched on a windowsill, Bond has once again created an adorable character that expresses the text perfectly. The humor and quick pace of Numeroff's engaging narrative make this book an excellent choice for reading aloud. A surefire crowd-pleaser.-Diane Janoff, Queens Borough Public Library, NY

May 15, 1998
Ages 3^-6. Following the same speculative logic that made "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" (1987) and "If You Give a Moose a Muffin" (1991) so popular, this winsome picture book shows what happens when a girl gives the little pig on her windowsill a plate of pancakes. One thing leads to another: pancakes to syrup, syrup to stickiness, stickiness to a bath, a bath to a rubber duck, the duck to homesickness for the pig's farm, homesickness to packing for the trip, packing to finding tap shoes, tap shoes to performing a dance, the dance to taking photos--and eventually to another plate of pancakes. The wild gyrations of the plot will delight children as much as the clean, orderly lines and clear, gentle color of the artwork. Expect many requests for this one, from parents, teachers, and children. ((Reviewed May 15, 1998))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1998, American Library Association.)

July 1, 1998
The creators of 'If You Give a Mouse a Cookie' re-create that hilarious havoc, this time with a girl and a precocious piglet. The girl waits on the charming pig, who rushes from activity to activity, including building an elaborate, wallpapered tree house. The eye-catching illustrations consist of neatly drawn pen-and-ink outlines with watercolor washes sitting crisply in lots of white space.

(Copyright 1998 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)