Pocket Piggies Opposites!

July 1, 2016
Itty-bitty piggies demonstrate opposites. An adorable "small" black-spotted piglet gazes out at readers from next to a "big" sleeping adult in the first double-page spread. Turn the page to find a "messy" piglet daubed with bright paint opposite a "clean" piglet artfully draped with lather in a tub, with bubbles floating around. One mildly inventive spread depicts two sleepy piggies "inside" a little toy house with two pairs of pink, polka-dot wellies flanking the door; opposite is one piggy standing in the grass "outside" with all four wellies on. None of the opposite pairs is particularly startling, and although most more or less illustrate the concepts, readers will have to work hard to see that the "cold" piggy is walking across frost-rimed leaves. (The "hot" piggy is sunning itself in a folding chair.) Back-of-the-book copy trumpets that its models are "Those Famous Teacup Pigs of Pennywell Farm," an English breeder of "miniature pigs." Since the subjects have been so studiously posed with toy props, however, there is no sense of scale to give readers a sense of how diminutive they actually are, and to the uneducated eye, they might as well just be equally adorable full-size piglets. Cute but nothing more. (Board book. 6 mos.-2)

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