Little Pig - Hardcover

Ramachander, Akumal

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670843504 ISBN 13: 9780670843503

Publisher: Viking Juvenile, 1992

Synopsis

A moral fable that deals with the issues of trust and betrayal focuses on the fate of a baby pig that has become the pet of a farm girl named Mary.

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Reviews

Grade 3-7-- An odd marriage of conceptual art to a didactic, moralistic story. Each month a van arrives at Mary's Pig Farm and takes the round, fat pigs away. But Mary spares Little Pig and treats him as a pampered pet, building him a house with his own bed and showering him with presents. As he grows older, Mary's attitude towards him changes and she eventually tricks him into entering the dreaded van, but with the help of conveniently placed school children, the pigs escape. Meanwhile back on the farm, Mary is tormented by her betrayal of the animal, and dreams of turning into a pig. When the angry driver returns to the farm, he sees a pig dressed in woman's clothes, hurries it into the van, and drives away. What happens to Little Pig? What happens to Mary? Who cares? Trying too hard for morbid irony, Ramachander's fable never really clicks. The slight story line is illogical, the writing calculated, and the characterization nonexistent. Illustrating this bizarre story are color photographs of a draped human figure holding masklike paintings. Executed in what appears to be charcoal and oil pastel on illustration board, the flat masks feature stylized renderings of pigs interacting with a human face. The crude, hurried looking application of oil pastel belies the sophistication of the art. While the basic idea may attract some attention, the substance just isn't there. --Denise Anton Wright, Illinois State Univ . , Normal
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This unsettling tale ambitiously and not entirely successfully sets out to expand picture book norms. At first, the story seems traditional enough: it tells of Mary's pig farm and the birth of Little Pig--"he looked very pretty. . . . She fell in love with Little Pig." But "Mary's Little Lamb" (as the neighbors call him) is still a pig, and one day Mary treacherously lures him into the slaughterhouse van. That night, Mary has uneasy, guilt-ridden dreams and she metamorphoses into a pig herself, to become the van's latest cargo. Though it hints at such messages as "do as you would be done by," the story's point is unclear; some will find many meanings in this tale, others an empty center. Eidrigevicius's ( Johnny Longnose ) avant-garde photographic illustrations contribute to the story's ambiguity. A black-clad actor wears a series of masks, each an image that comments on the action in a drastically simplified manner. The book is flawed by occasionally turgid phrasing--"His future seemed to vanish altogether from his sight"--and by its own lofty aim at high art status, which will make this book incomprehensible to most children. All ages.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Viking Juvenile
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0670843504
• ISBN 13: 9780670843503
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Eidrigevicius Stasys
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32