Must Pigs Fly Before This Farmer's Wife Gets a Little Help?

When you're as accomplished an artist as Arnold Lobel, what reason would there be for not illustrating one of your own books? I contemplated this when I borrowed the book A Treeful of Pigs from the library. As the illustrator is Anita Lobel, his wife, my guess is that they either dreamed up the idea together or that he wanted the opportunity to give her career a boost by collaborating with him. When two people in the same family have such talent, it seems natural that they would eventually join forces. At any rate, she's up to the task, and her vibrant drawings have a lovely folksy quality about them that perfectly complements the straightforward but silly story.

A Treeful of Pigs is not an I CAN READ book. It is presented in a considerably larger format, with plenty of room for the pictures that fill the pages. Every other page is entirely devoted to a picture, most of which depict the pudgy farmer (bearing a mustache and head of black hair reminiscent of Mario of Nintendo fame) lazing about in bed or reacting to the unusual antics of the pigs he convinced his wife to take in. The text is cleverly framed by another illustration, and these are a bit more stylized, with creative borders on top rather like the ones Jan Brett uses in so many of her books.

The story reads like a folk tale, and there are hints of the classic The Little Red Hen. A farmer sees a dozen pigs for sale and is eager to purchase them. When his wife objects, citing all the hard work raising them will require, the farmer assures her that the job will be simple, especially since they will be working together. When it comes time to actually take care of his newly acquired livestock, however, the farmer makes like Toad in several of Lobel's Frog and Toad books and unequivocally states his intention to remain in bed.

There is an enjoyable cadence to this book as the wife goes to the husband with her request that he assist her in some caretaking task and he responds by promising to help her some other time, providing a highly unusual set of circumstances by which that time is defined. The wife, determined and self-sufficient, performs the necessary tasks but also manages cleverly to bring to fruition her husband's unlikely scenarios, causing the pigs to bloom like flowers, dangle from a tree and fall from the sky like rain. Each time, however, the farmer goes back on his promise, and she has little recourse but to grumble about what a lazy husband she has.

Finally, annoyed by all the interruptions in his napping, the farmer wishes the pigs would just disappear. But when they actually do, he begins to appreciate how much his wife has done for him up to this point. This is a sweet and funny story about equality in marital relationships and making good on your promises. Enjoyable as the book is likely to be for kids, I think married couples might get an even bigger kick out of this silly but ultimately touching tale of cooperation and compromise.