Story Time Monday

We had a lot of fun reading Eileen Christelow's The Great Pig Search in Story Time on Monday. Bert's truck of pigs breaks down on the way to the market and the pigs all escaped into town, where they found clothes and blended into the population. Then they flee to Florida, where they make the mistake of sending Bert a postcard simply saying "Oink!" When Bert and Ethel take a vacation in Florida Bert can't stop looking for the pigs, much to Ethel's dismay. Poor Bert can't find the pigs even when they are the cab driver, the motel desk clerk, the waiter, the dance band --in fact, the pigs are everywhere but since they are dressed in disguise as regular people, and since Bert is so oblivious, he just doesn't see them. My kids really enjoyed coming up to the screen to point out where they saw the disguised pigs. In the end, but not until they are on their way home, it becomes painfully clear to Bert and Ethel that they have overlooked the obvious. A very clever and funny story.

For the littlest ones, I read My Truck is Stuck by Kevin Lewis and Daniel Kirk, another funny story where picture-reading is a key element. A truck carrying a big load of bones gets stuck in a big pot hole. While the drivers seek help from a variety of other vehicles --a van, a bus, a touring car -- prairie dogs sneak up to the back of the truck and carry off the bones one by one. When the truck is finally towed out of the hole by a tow truck, the drivers don't realize that they now have an empty load.

I like the colorful pictures in this book, the clever melding of two stories (the stuck truck and the sneaky prairie dogs), the depiction of the different types of vehicles, and the use of numbers and rhyming words. Apparently this book is the sequel to The Great Pig Escape, which is now on my "to order" list.