HOGG, HOGG, & HOG

Three clever pigs are at the forefront of trendsetting when it comes to The Big City. Thanks to them, the whole metropolis is enamored of the newest thing: oinking. The trouble? In time, oinking becomes passé. Desperate to return to indispensability, the pigs think back to their days on the farm and decide to steal a line or two from their old pals Sheep, Frog and Duck. Unfortunately for them, trouble arrives when the former friends come knocking for their share of the pie. Palatini’s wry spoof about Madison Avenue and its trends and their shelf life probably won’t make much sense to kids, nor will in-jokes to things like HGX NEWS (which, truth be told, don’t always make a lot of sense to adults, either). As for the art, the digital collage is eye-catching if not exceptional. Palatini’s first foray into illustration is a noble experiment, featuring a sophisticated palette of purple, gray and lavender and depicting her protagonists in satiric style as grotesquely corpulent. That said, she may wish to consider spending slightly less time on her art in the future and more on what she does best of all: storytelling. (Picture book. 4-8)