Cousin John: The Story of a Boy and a Small Smart Pig

Cousin John by Walter Paine Illustrated by Bert Dodson Bunker Hill Publishing (2006) Pages A boy and his pig Review by Nan Lincoln Well here's another "pig tale" to add to your list of stories about little piggies going to market, practical pigs building houses and that one famous Maine pig beloved by a spider nabbed Charlotte. Now comes Cousin John, who, like the famed Wilbur of E.B. White's Charlotte's Web, is a runt who brings joy and adventure into a child's life. But both the child and the pig in this story are real. "Cousin John" is a memoir by Mount Desert Island summer resident Walter Paine about a very special year in his life when his small smart pig connected him to his rather remote father. It is also a journey back in time, when the town of Brookline, Massachusetts was still considered country, and a boy could grow up there on a farm watching his neighbor till the soil with a team of horses and plow and go wondering about in the woods in search of beetles and other crawly things. It seems that young Walter spent much of his time alone in those woods, exploring and playing solitary games. His dad worked in the city five days a week, and on weekend preferred puttering about in his wood workshop rather than planning activities with his boy. "Children can get weird ideas about their parents," Mr. Paine writes. "One of mine was that the difficulties I was having with my father were somehow my fault. I had assumed I had done something to irritate him." But as he tells his story it seems that his father too, is having difficulty trying to figure out how to approach his own son -- be a father. In an early section of the book, Mr. Paine suggests that his father's father, too, was a remote and stern presence. At least his dad tries, and one of the most successful tries was when he showed up one day with a small pig in his arms. Boy and pig take to each other immediately and soon young Walter has a friend to accompany him in his rambles through the woods and neighborhood. We get to go along on some of these rambles, thanks not only to Mr. Paine's very accessible prose but to some truly wonderful illustrations by Bert Dodson. Bunker Hill Publishing (which in the interest of disclosure also published my two books) has a reputation for putting out a handsome product. And this is no exception. The illustrations, book design -- even the font and paper selection make this just the sort of book one would like to have in ones personal library. There is nothing spectacular about the episodes Mr. Paine relates in this memoir -- Cousin John falls down a hole, gets into a garden, gets chased by dogs or finds a really great specimen of a stag beetle (attached to his nose). But it does make for some very pleasant reading. It is also touching to note how Walter's dad becomes increasingly involved with his son's life after the arrival of Cousin John. The father's reaction to an event is often as vividly recalled as the event itself. Mr. Paine's mother, howev