Never Take a Pig to Lunch: Poems about the Fun of Eating

Combine in a large-format book some 60 outrageously funny poems about food. Illustrate liberally with whimsy and panache, and the result might be this deliciously gleeful volume. The menu on the back cover of Westcott's clever collection promises poems about ``the fun of eating'' organized into four overlapping categories: ``eating silly things,'' ``eating foods we like,'' ``eating too much'' and ``manners at the table.'' Westcott puts the emphasis on fun: she not only spices the volume with Miss Piggy's advice about diets (``Never eat more than you can lift'') but adds Nora Ephron's advice about spinach (``Divide into little piles. Rearrange into new piles. After five or six maneuvers, sit back and say you are full''). Even poems by the generally decorous Eve Merriam and Myra Cohn Livingston seem to reflect the cheeky good humor and giddiness of the more numerous selections by Florence Parry Heide, Ogden Nash and Jack Prelutsky. Westcott's lively and comical watercolors--like those she does for a regular column in Gourmet magazine--will satisfy anyone with a taste for humor. All ages. (Mar.)