Pignapped!: A Cobtown Story - Hardcover

Van Nutt, Julia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385325592 ISBN 13: 9780385325592

Publisher: Doubleday Books for Young Readers, 2000

Synopsis

Missing: One Little Striped Pig!

Oinkey has been pignapped! Three men of science arrive in Cobtown to collect new and rare plants, minerals, and animals. They are eager to take their discoveries back to the big city of Ploomajiggy. But their expedition fails. Humiliated, the scientists leave town, but not before one of them, Dr. Z. Z. Squeers, makes off with an animal that he's determined to display at the Ploomajiggy Museum of Animal History. The animal is Heddy Peggler's wild pig, Oinkey. But Oinkey doesn't go willingly. . . . With no time to lose, Heddy and her friend Fliberty Jibbert take off after Dr. Squeers. Lucky Hart joins them in Ploomajiggy. But what awaits them at the museum is enough to frighten the bravest soul. Will Oinkey regain his freedom? Or will he be forever captive and immortalized in the name of science?

About this title

About the Author

Julia and Robert Van Nutt have been working together for twenty-five years. During this time, they have worked on numerous design jobs, from freelancing for The New York Times to working on sets and costumes for a Broadway play. In the last ten years, they have designed eight children’s books and six animated videos that were shown on national television.


The Van Nutts use history to guide them as they write and illustrate their Cobtown stories. With an amazing cast of characters and an in-depth study of everyday life in the 1840s, these stories–inspired by a hobby of collecting electric trains–take place in the village of Cobtown.

From the Back Cover

Praise for A Cobtown Christmas:

"Only Scrooge could resist this elaborately packaged plum pudding of a picture book."
--The New York Times Book Review
"A rollicking plot with well-researched 19th-century detail. [The] illustrations have an agreeable naive quality, and scrapbook-y touches enhance the authentic [diary] feel."
--Publishers Weekly

Reviews

Kindergarten-Grade 2-Determined not to return home empty-handed, three bumbling "Men of Science" steal a wild pig from Cobtown in 1845, intending to stuff and display him in the Ploomajiggy Museum of Animal History. With the help of Fliberty Jibbert and Lucky Hart, the 10-year-old narrator, Oinkey is rescued in the nick of time. The story is preceded by a gratuitous one-page introduction in which a present-day girl and her grandmother retrieve an ancestor's diaries from an attic trunk. Many readers will find this slight story cluttered and overly precious. Busy endpapers are covered with the front pages of the Cobtown Observer and the Ploomajiggy Trumpet and the lengthy text looks like hand-printed journal entries. Scattered illustrations of the different kinds of leaves found in Cobtown further convolute the story. There isn't much plot here, and what little there is does not involve readers. There's a lot to look at, but nothing to remember.
Christine A. Moesch, Buffalo & Erie County Public Library, NY
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Doubleday Books for Young Readers
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0385325592
• ISBN 13: 9780385325592
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Van Nutt Robert
• Number of pages: 32