I hate Scholastic Book Fairs. I hate them because I love them. Every year I give myself a limit to the amount of books I’m allowed to purchase (a.k.a. the amount of money I’m allowed to spend). And every year, I ignore that limit.
But school’s out, you say. You will be safe in the summer, you say. Not so. Because libraries hold book fairs too. And when you spend four out of seven days of the week in a library, well, you see my problem.
This year, one of my favorite finds is a picture book.
The Princess and the Pig written by Jonathan Emmett and illustrated by Poly Bernatene and published in 2011 includes many of my favorite things in one. Fractured fairytales, anyone? Princesses? Literary references? And while the cover doesn’t exactly sparkle with glitter, it gives off a definite sheen.
The book begins with a poor but kind farmer rescuing an unwanted pig from the market. Meanwhile in the palace, the queen passes off the responsibility of her stinky baby to sixteen nannies. Through a mistake and some mechanics, the baby and the pig switch places. A pig in the palace–who wouldn’t like that? And this is not a magical fairytale pig. It’s the regular, roll in the mud pig.
The people around the princess and the pig try to explain away the strange occurrences with a variety of references to classic literature and fairytales. This will lead the adult reader to smile at the inside jokes and the child to (hopefully) ask about the stories featured, including Sleeping Beauty, The Prince and the Pauper (obviously) and Thumbelina.
If you can get the boys past the Princess in the title–I say this for myself and others like me who read to groups of children from a variety of homes and gender “rules”–they will love it along with girls of the princess and tomboy variety. There’s enough silly dialogue to make it a fun read-aloud and just the right amount of repetition so that the kiddos can eventually take over ‘reading’ parts of it. The ending will have everyone laughing.
Because it’s one of the things that attracted me to it, I must mention the illustrations. They are bright, clever and cartoonish, mixing in equal amounts of cute and absurd. Each illustration has visible texture. You can see the brushstrokes. Well, just see for yourself.
Life's a Book 