Watch Out for Wolf!

All day, the pigs scurry around completing tasks. Piggle goes shopping for baking supplies and chocolate. Piggums stays home to blow up balloons and hang streamers, closing the shutters when a lupine shadow appears. Piggit speeds “from hutch to hole to burrow to nest,” writes Rissi, delivering invitations, while the owl hoots a warning: wolf is out. The pigs don’t want to cross her path, but not for the reason readers might expect. A gently subversive plot twist ends this story with cake and a surprise celebration, providing a funny resolution to the genuine sense of suspense conjured by Santoso’s richly colored, cartoonish illustrations of adorable little pigs in various states of wide-eyed panic. And any child who has struggled with a cake full of candles will admire the way the wolf “huffed... and puffed... and... blew the candles out in one ferocious breath.” Ages 3–5. [em](Apr.) [/em]