Book talk: The Princess and the Pig by Jonathan Emmett

In fairy tales, there are good queens and bad queens. 

In this fairy tale, the queen is completely stupid. {Show page 4}. When looking at her new baby girl, stupid queen holds her by the edge of the tower. Mistake #1. Then she decides her new baby girl needs a diaper change, so she leaves her alone to get a nanny to do it. Mistake #2. Then she doesn’t even notice when her own daughter falls off the edge of a very, very high tower. Mistake #3. Poor baby. Stupid, stupid queen.

Luckily, a poor farmer with a soft cart of straw was below. In his cart he had a little pink pig which no one would buy. Down comes baby, hits the cart, and up goes the pig, landing in the baby’s cradle. I know, it’s a fairy tale. But it really happened.

So now we have a stupid queen with a pig in her baby’s cradle, and a poor farmer with a princess baby in his straw cart. A recipe for disaster, right? But who do you think is the better parent…the stupid queen or the poor farmer? If you guessed the poor farmer, you’re right. That princess baby probably got a good set of parents instead of an idiot royal pair.

Wait until you see how the pig acts when she gets older [show example page/s]…what a disaster!

The Princess and the Pig by Jonathan Emmett, illustrated by Poly Bernatene. Unpaged. Walker and Company, 2011. Booktalk to K-2.