Piggypine

K-Gr 3–Santoso’s (Feeling Grateful) delightful illustrations bring to life Piggypine, a half pig, half porcupine who can’t run, fly, or spell and whose favorite food is toilet paper with honey, but who is desperate to find his story. This book details Piggypine’s increasingly intrusive efforts to force his way into a different story, “My First Dog,” where a girl named Ruby gets her first dog unless Piggypine can find a way to alter the plot. In Morris’s (Bear Came Along) throwback to meta favorites such as Jon Agee’s There’s a Wall in the Middle of This Book, Piggypine addresses both Ruby and an unseen narrator. As Ruby realizes that perhaps Piggypine might be the perfect pet for her after all, Piggypine rejoices in finding his own story at last. Terrific pacing and a clever use of endpapers bring text and illustration together in a way that is satisfying not just to Ruby and Piggypine, but to readers as well: Piggypine is perfect just being himself.