cover image Snuffles and Snouts

Snuffles and Snouts

Laura Robb. Dial Books, $14.99 (40pp) ISBN 978-0-8037-1597-4

Even show-stealing Miss Piggy might enjoy sharing the spotlight with the porcine stars of this ebullient collection of poems about pigs. Verses (from such poets as Ogden Nash, Myra Cohn Livingston and Mary Ann Hoberman) give the whole humorous hog on blue-ribbon porkers, bewigged pigs and outright swine. Robb opens the volume with some light verse of her own (``Madame Froufrou's Pet Boutique''), which makes up for what it lacks in meter with its enthusiastic humor. Kellogg's (Parents in the Pigpen, Pigs in the Tub) whimsical illustrations are dotted with clever details: a hog at a poetry reading holds a book titled ``Pig Out for Poetry and Pizza''; at a ``Public Bog'' a sign advises parents that ``Piglets must be supervised while wallowing.'' Move over, Babe-as that famous farmyard critic Charlotte the spider would say, these greedy, wallowing, slimy, prize-winning, winsome and chuffling pigs are ``SOME PIGS!'' Ages 6-10. (Oct.)