HATCH, LITTLE EGG

Pig lovers will be utterly confused by this book.

The story begins with a traffic jam. Manceau has carefully drawn an entire street full of deer on motorcycles and other animals in cars and trucks. Some of them have cameras. All of them are shouting, “The little bird is hatching!” Everyone gathers around a small, yellow-orange egg, whose shell has begun to crack. They begin to count: “One, two, three….” This is where the story gets odd. The egg pops open and out comes a bright Crayola-pink pig. The odd part is that all the animals begin to walk away in disappointment. They say, “Who does that pig think he is?” This is puzzling, because a pig hatching out of an egg seems much more exciting than a baby bird. (Fans of Olivia and Charlotte’s Web might argue that a baby pig is the cutest thing in the world.) The last page is even more puzzling. The pig turns out to be a baby bird in a clever disguise. Apparently, he really hates paparazzi. Surrealists will rejoice. Other readers might be frustrated by the book’s “dog bites man” logic.

But even skeptics may be won over by the pictures. A pig really might be the cutest thing in the world—even if it’s a bird in disguise. (Picture book. 3-7)