Piggies
Audrey Wood and Don Wood
Sandpiper

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Audrey Wood’s “Piggies” opens with two full page spreads facing each other; a child’s hands appear with thumbs extended and quirky little porkers perched on the thumbs. Thus begins one of the more enduring of children’s works enjoyed by Osage County First Grade.

A small child's chubby hands become a means of daydream, flights of imagination and whimsy as each finger takes on the character of a piggy.

The finger on the right establishes a well got up porcine fellow; top hat, bumbershoot and tails, while on the other we find a diffident little, back up, rephrase, chunky gal armed with picnic fixins’. What is more, the left hand discloses a forefinger extended with a rather bookish type at the apex; sitting on a tome, thick horn rims, he is pouring over a weighty volume.

As each leaf is turned we glimpse the preceding pigs and a growing number of comrades who are joining the fun. From elongated, to plump, to witty, to silly the assembly expands; the fellow with the top hat scrutinizes, while the reader maintains his reading and the picnic becomes a banquet of bananas, strawberries and even snow balls.

There are minute piggies, sizzling piggies, frosty piggies, spotless piggies, filthy little piggies, well behaved piggies, but not at bedtime when they ‘skip down to my tummy, and dance on my toes’.

It is not long before the piggies run off to hide until the child puts jammy clad piggies in a line for kisses. And oh, those kisses. There are chubby kisses, tidy kisses, extended kisses, silly kisses and teeny weeny kisses.

Osage County First Grade loves books, all and any books, whatever the book I reach for brings an immediate rush of small people to the rug where they sit rapt, filled with anticipation, eyes bright; listening with every fiber as only small Listeners can do.

The well worn, taped together pages of Audrey Wood’s “Piggies” attests to the enjoyment modern Osage County First Grade receives from this old time tale. The cover is held together with duct tape, the pages have been taped and retaped back into the cover, individual pages have been lovingly turned and returned by countless Little Readers. 7

I like Don and Audrey Wood’s “Piggies” too.