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PiggybookAnthony Browne

Piggybook

by Anthony Browne

Ages 4–7 Reading age 6 Picture book Set in everyday life wrystrange

Mr Piggott and his sons leave everything to Mrs Piggott, until she walks out and the house slowly turns into a sty.

A story about children and families, wry and strange in tone. We would put it with children of 4–7, and at a reading age of about 6 for reading alone.

Our take on this book

Mrs Piggott does everything for her husband and two sons — cooks, cleans, works, and is barely thanked — until one day she leaves a note saying 'You are pigs', and vanishes, and the household she kept running literally begins to turn porcine without her. Anthony Browne, a former Children's Laureate, makes his point with surreal, brilliant pictures in which pig snouts and details creep into the wallpaper, the fittings and the family themselves as the house falls apart. It is a picture book with a sharp feminist message about who does the unseen work of a home, delivered through unforgettable, slightly unsettling imagery rather than any lecture. Nothing is frightening; the strangeness is thought-provoking. For a three- to six-year-old — and the adult reading along — it is a clever, funny, genuinely subversive book that opens up a real conversation about fairness and family, and a fine example of how much a picture book can say beneath a simple story.

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