My Lucky Birthday

April 1, 2013
Birthdays should be great fun. How awesome will Alligator Al's be? Alligator Al's ready to find himself a big treat for his birthday when there's a knock at his door. It's a piglet! What luck! Al snatches the piglet and ties him in a potato sack despite the piggy's protests that it's his birthday, too. Al begins preparing to cook up his birthday visitor, but the piglet points out that no birthday's complete without a birthday cake. Al agrees and follows the piglet's instructions for making a yummy cake. Then the piglet reminds him awesome guys deserve fancy decorations on their birthdays. Al decorates, and he's ready to start on his feast when the piglet says there ought to be guests; he offers to call his friends. With visions of a month's--or a year's!--worth of piglets, Al eagerly agrees...but piglet's friends turn out to be a fearsome rhino, hippo, boar and gorilla! Al flees in fright, leaving Piglet and friends to celebrate in style. With this tale of turnabouts, storytime favorite Kasza delivers a sly companion to My Lucky Day (2003), adding a postscript that gives extra insight into the disingenuous porker's M.O. Audiences of one or many will chortle at the trickery. Kasza's lively signature watercolor illustrations are the icing on this brightly colored cake. (Picture book. 2-7)

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July 1, 2013

PreS-Gr 2-The cunning pig from My Lucky Day (Putnam, 2003) is back, and the hapless victim of his tricks this time is Alligator Al. It's Al's birthday, and he considers himself quite lucky when a little porker knocks on his door looking for his friend, Freddy. It's Piglet's birthday, and there's going to be a party. Strange, thinks Al. "Who's Freddy? And who has the same birthday as me?" That should have been his first clue. However, Al only sees "the [birthday] dinner of his dreams" standing at his front door. In a flash, he has Piglet bagged up and ready to be cooked. Piglet convinces Al that he deserves a big birthday cake. Al takes the bait, and bakes a nice cake for himself. But what's a party without awesome decorations, asks Piglet. So, Al decorates with balloons and ribbons and a banner. Furthermore, Al shouldn't celebrate alone, says Piglet. "Shall I invite my friends?" A houseful of tasty piglets would just about be the "luckiest birthday ever" for Al, so he concedes. Piglet's friends aren't tasty pork chops, however. Rhino, Hippo, Wild Boar, and Gorilla are so big and scary that Al runs off, leaving Piglet to celebrate his luckiest birthday ever. The final page connects this story to Piglet's earlier lucky day, leaving readers to wonder who will become Piglet's next victim. The illustrations are done in gouache, and although they are typical of Kasza's style, they lack the visual charm of the art in A Mother for Choco (Putnam, 1992), for example. Nevertheless, this trickster/comeuppance story is a fine addition to picture-book collections.-Roxanne Burg, Orange County Public Library, CA

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