Being a Pig Is Nice: A Child's-Eye View of Manners

An offbeat story is Sally Lloyd-Jones' BEING A PIG IS NICE: A CHILD'S-EYE VIEW OF MANNERS, recommended for ages 4-8. Children have to be polite and clean - but what about pigs? Or owls? The definition of 'manners' might change under such circumstances! Dan Krall's engaging drawings lends to a fun consideration of changing definitions of manners.

Are you tired of being nagged by your parents to wash your hands, sit up straight and mind your manners? You should consider becoming a pig - they don't have to deal with that nonsense. When you are a proper swine, it is imperative to be dirty and just a wee bit rank. Pig parents value filth and stink. Or if pace is your problem, you could become a snail instead. Snails kids are encouraged to dawdle and lag behind the others. This book touts the advantages to becoming part of any number of animal families. Elephants get to splash in the tub as much as they want, flinging water in all directions. Monkeys get to be all sorts of crazy, and owls stay up all night long! Monsters are the very best because they are bad and naughty all the time. If you are a monster, you must be dreadful and disgusting and rude as they come. What could be more fun that that? The little girl in this story has oodles of imagination, which makes for a super fun read. It's a pretty hilarious concept for kids to picture themselves being part of another animal family, and to expound on what the expectations for that animal would be. Getting in trouble for being too neat or going to bed early? Expect a lot of hooting and howling when reading this one. The bright illustrations are a perfect match for this wild animal story. Definitely an awesome read for kids of all ages! Super fun and just generally hilarious and enjoyable.

This is a review from: "being a pig is nice: A CHILD'S-EYE VIEW OF MANNERS" This story is very fun to read with a young child. My daughter is 3 and she LOVED it. She laughed and laughed, looking forward to each new page. It was fun to read a story that looks at manners from a different perspective, like what it means for a monkey or an elephant to have good manners. Then, after reading what good manners are for other animals, my little girl and I talked about how those manners were different than the manners of people. The pictures are bright and engaging. The language is descriptive and humorous. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to help their kids work on appropriate manners, as well as to anyone who just wants a laugh. The only thing that bothered me about the story was the first half of the title being written in lowercase and the second half being written in uppercase. This can be confusing to children learning to read, but in reverse, it can be used to point differences out to them. The rest of this story is written with traditional capitalization and such.