Piggie Pie by Margie Palatini

Piggie Pie by Margie Palatini  (Published in 1995).   32 Unnumbered pages. 420L.  R.L. 2.5 Grades 2-3.  Piggie Pie I must have Piggie Pie, but where can I find 8 plump piggies?

Booklist starred (Vol. 92, No. 1 (September 1, 1995))

Ages 5-8. This is definitely not your run-of-the-mill Halloween picture book, even though Gritch the Witch certainly looks her part (though a bit more trendy), with a pointy hat, a gap-toothed grin, vicious green fingernails, and two beauteous moles on her face. She acts her part, too, swaggering, greedy, and just plain impatient, as she brooms off to Old MacDonald's Farm in search of eight plump porkers for her favorite pie. But Palatini deftly turns the tables on Gritch, whose own sense of importance (and the skywritten warning "Surrender Piggies!" ) gives her victims time to implement a plan to save their bacon. When hungry Gritch arrives at the farm, she can't find a single pig. Instead, she finds a wolf, whom she slyly invites home: "I always enjoy having a wolf for lunch." The wry, peppery dialogue is simply great ("Look, Shorty, I've been quack-quacked here, moo-mooed there, and clucked-clucked everywhere all over this farm" ), and Palatini's allusions to popular children's stories from The Wizard of Oz to the "Three Little Pigs" will delight kids. So will Fine's bold, expressive artwork, which gives wicked Gritch a comic audacity that makes her trouncing all the better. A sardonically humorous, rip-roaring yarn that can be enjoyed all year round.

Piggie Pie is a read aloud that I am anxious to start every year.  Poor Gritch the Witch, more than anything else she is craving Piggie Pie.  She checks her recipe and pantry and she has everything she needs to make Piggie Pie except for 8 Plump Piggies.  This story is delightfully written as she scours the local farm for her piggies, but can find only suspicious looking ducks, chickens, lumpy cows and an Old McDonald who really doesn't look much like his picture.  I read this book with 2nd graders every year, then I assign parts to students and we enjoy a Reader's Theater activity the next day with everyone in the class having a part in the play.  On the author's website, www.margiepalatini.com,  you can download the reader's theater for duplication.  It is always a fun day on the farm with Piggie Pie

by Margo Irving