DON’T GET LOST!
by Pat Hutchins & illustrated by Pat Hutchins
Hutchins offers quick comfort for a common anxiety: securing parental permission for a post-breakfast ramble. Little Piglet and three companions gambol the morning away in a succession of fields—but when lunchtime comes around, they can no longer find the landmark apples, turnips, and hay that will lead them back to the farmyard. Their fear of being lost ends when they spot their mothers waiting for them, with a wagonload of freshly harvested apples, turnips, and hay for lunch. As usual, Hutchins’s toddler-pleasing art features jointed, toy-like figures placed against brightly patterned backdrops. Grammatically sensitive adults may bristle as the young animals ask, “Can I go? . . . ” And, considering the utter absence of humans, urban children may assume that the foodstuffs harvested themselves. But, no matter: young two-leggers will happily follow these four-legged playmates into Hutchins’s patchwork farmscape. (Picture book. 3-6)