Piggy 1-2-3: Piggy Pie Po by Audrey and Don Wood

PIGGY PIE PO IS SO SMART,
HE CAN DO THE FINEST ART.

EVERY BOOK UPON HIS SHELF
HE CAN READ ALL BY HIMSELF.

FOR A PENNY HE WILL SPELL
PISTACHIO AND PIMPERNEL.

BUT THERE'S ONE THING HE CAN'T DO...
PIGGY PIE CAN'T TIE HIS SHOE
--YET!

Piggy Pie Po is a talented and yet imperfect pig. He's still got a few things to learn, like, well, manners, as when as a dinner guest he arrives a little early and helps himself to some lemon pie, leaving only crumbs and dribbles behind, leaves piggy footprints across the elegant three-layer cake, and ends with the pea soup tureen inverted upon his head. But then Piggy encounters a delectable-looking garnish, and suddenly the punishment fits the perpetrator.

HE ATE A PEPPER
SO HOT! SO RED!

HE RAN STRAIGHT HOME...
AND WENT TO BED.

A brand-new Audrey and Don Wood collaboration is an event to be celebrated. Their beloved The Napping House has become a preschool classic, and their latest, Piggy Pie Po (Harcourt/Houghton Mifflin, 2010), forthcoming in mid-September, joins such preschool and primary grade picture-book staples as Alphabet Adventure, their Caldecott book King Bidgood's in the Bathtub, Heckedy Peg, (A Voyager/Hbj Book) and Piggies among the pair's hits. In this new one Piggy Pie Po himself is the whole show, drawn super-size, as befits a proper piggy personality, and spotted center stage against bright-white backgrounds. A personable but fairly pig-like porker, Piggy parades through three short vignettes in full dress or clad only in bath time bubbles, snorkeling with tropical fishes, beating his congo drum, or decimating the culinary delights at a dinner party in Audrey and Donald Wood's lively water-colored drawings. Audrey Wood's talent for jaunty rhyming couplets, with just a touch of alliterative spice, keeps the story jouncing jollily along on a ride that will keep young listeners or beginning readers engaged until Piggy finally comes to his justly repentant and mortified rest in his own little bed.