Suddenly!: A Preston Pig Story

Rating:
Summary: good fun
Review: easy reading level , but enough twists in the good humored plot to keep it interesting. If you like this, check our "the Trouble with Boys"

Rating:
Summary: cute little story...but...?
Review: I got this book in hopes it would be a helpful tool in learning Vietnamese. The text is simple enough, but my Vietnamese friend kept giving me alternative translations because she was skeptical that it was the best translation into that language. Not that I personally could judge... However, I am looking for more of these parallel texts between Vietnamese and English and wish there were more...

Rating:
Summary: Lots of Fun
Review: This imaginative book tells of an innocent little pig followed around the neighborhood by a hungry and scheming wolf. Each page shows Preston walking around the neighborhood seemingly in imminent danger (connoted by the words "when suddenly!" with "suddenly" in big bold type). As noted above, this is almost the pig and wolf equivalent of the Road Runner and Wiley Coyote (except the pig never plots against the wolf), and there are similarly benign results for the pig and violent injury to the wolf. The "violence" is cartoonish, but it's there (wolf is run over by his own steam roller, Billy the Bully gets bitten instead of our hero, Preston, the wolf crashes to the floor, and heavily bandaged wolf heads off to "wolf hospital): You may or may not believe such material is appropriate for your child. We thought it was alright, and the "Suddenly!" hook is a lot of fun (especially for you dramatic readers out there). Big, colorful, sometimes "Mad Magazine" style pictures in its 26 pages. This would also be a very good book for the beginning reader