If You Give a Pig a Pancake (Hardcover)

The role reversal begins with a young girl eating a pancake in her kitchen. A friendly piglet looks through the window and nicely inquires about the possibility of acquiring a pancake as well. As you can see, this is a pretty unusual beginning for a story. Few of us associate girls and pigs. Now, pigs will eat anything, so it's unusual to think of them as being discriminating. Also, have you ever seen a piglet hanging on a window sill? How did she get there? All of these changes quickly set up the story to create new perceptions.

Adults will appreciate the humorous, indirect reference to that classic dish in pancake houses everwhere of "pigs in a blanket" (pancakes wrapped around long sausages).

The delicious incongruities are piled on, one after another. When the piglet gets sticky from eating syrup with the pancake, the piglet decides she wants to take a bath. Piglets and baths create a hilarious image, because pigs usually like to wallow in the mud.

This piglet has many cultivated tastes. She gets interested in tap dancing, and needs a costume. She also gets homesick, and wants to write to her friends. She takes Polaroid pictures to send to them. On the way out to mail the letters and photographs, she spots a tree and wants to build a tree house. Naturally, this requires some serious decorating, with wallpaper and paste. Yup, pretty soon she's sticky. That reminds her of syrup. Now wouldn't a pancake go nicely with that?

As you can see, the role reversal continues by making the child in the story into the caretaker (parent, older sibling, or baby sitter). While the piglet is full of energy, the girl becomes quite tired. Also, notice that the piglet does nothing for the girl. This gives the perspective of what it is like to be with someone who is demanding, and not considerate in return. There are no pleases, thank yous, or gifts.

A hint of the regular world peeks in through the mess that the piglet is making with the girl's help. Someone is not going to be pleased to see all of this. Your child will instinctively pick up on that problem.

As a result, your child can learn from this book lessons like

-- how demanding it can be to be a care provider

-- how ceaseless a child's demands can be

-- how spontaneity can create the opportunity for many interesting activities that would not otherwise occur

-- the benefits of having everyone help keep things neat and tidy as you go (clean up one thing before starting another)

-- how all things are ultimately connected in many ways (this stimulates creativity and problem solving)

-- how things can be different than they are now . . . if only we focus our attention and efforts on them.

Beyond the lessons, this is a delightful book for a beginning reader. The humor draws their attention, so that the book will soon become a favorite. Most children will enjoy it from around the age of 2. From repetition, they will memorize the story. You can then show them the words that match the sounds. Pretty soon, decoding of words for themselves begins. You can stop and let them fill in the blank, as well. The story has a lot of repetition in certain words, which makes the memorization easier. Eventually, they will "read" the story to you as memorized. You can follow the words with you finger and help them connect to the sounds that way, as well. Then, they will actually begin to read it aloud to you. Because the story is very funny, and has all of these lessons, you can expect that that the book will be also read occasionally after age 8. This is a great book to lighten the day of a child struggling with what seems like a mountain of homework.

Felicia Bond deserves special credit here. Working with a piglet to make the story credible is quite a challenge and she carried it off admirably. There is a Winnie the Pooh feeling to the illustrations that will help ease your child into exploring those wonderful stories as well.

I also highly recommend other books in this series, especially If You Give a Moose a Muffin and If You Take a Mouse to the Movies. If You Give a Moose a Muffin is my favorite of the three.

A fun thing to do with this book is to act out the roles. You can be the piglet, and let your child be the little girl. You can have all of the materials ready to go before you start, or you can have everything be make-believe.

Don't just chase your tail, make progress . . . even when you're going in circles!