Zeke Pippin

Rating:
Summary: Another classic from Steig
Review: If you normally find yourself nodding off while reading picture books to your kids, try Zeke Pippin. My sons love the part where Zeke "zeezles and zoozles" on his "supernatural mouth organ" and the language keeps them (and me!) on our toes.

Rating:
Summary: One of William Steig's very, very best books for kids
Review: There was a time in my life where I practically had "Zeke Pippin" memorized, start to finish, so enormously popular was it with my young son and daughter. Even to this day, William Steig's superbly offbeat text (he describes harmonica-playing as "zeezling and zoozling" and when a character nods off, he later "nods back on again") is something to behold.

Steig resolutely refuses to talk down to kids. He throws in the occasional weird word, odd phrase, or elaborately worded paragraph just to keep kids (and their parents) on their toes. The enviable result is that his book--both this and others--is utterly memorable and stands apart from the masses of touchy-feely children's books out there.

Zeke Pippin is a pig whose life is changed by a harmonica he finds. After numerous adventures, narrow escapes, and a great number of lovingly-detailed meals and snacks (he is, after all, a pig), Zeke Pippin becomes a hero in his town and a friend to sick children. This combination of Horatio Alger pluck and Robert Louis Stevenson excitement is winning and rewards frequent reading. Steig's inimitable illustrations are just as terrific as the text. He manages to convey more with just a few watercolor tints and a wobbly black line than other artists do with a great deal more equipment (and less talent). Rewarding time and time again.

Rating:
Summary: One of William Steig's very, very best books for kids
Review: There was a time in my life where I practically had "Zeke Pippin" memorized, start to finish, so enormously popular was it with my young son and daughter. Even to this day, William Steig's superbly offbeat text (he describes harmonica-playing as "zeezling and zoozling" and when a character nods off, he later "nods back on again") is something to behold.

Steig resolutely refuses to talk down to kids. He throws in the occasional weird word, odd phrase, or elaborately worded paragraph just to keep kids (and their parents) on their toes. The enviable result is that his book--both this and others--is utterly memorable and stands apart from the masses of touchy-feely children's books out there.

Zeke Pippin is a pig whose life is changed by a harmonica he finds. After numerous adventures, narrow escapes, and a great number of lovingly-detailed meals and snacks (he is, after all, a pig), Zeke Pippin becomes a hero in his town and a friend to sick children. This combination of Horatio Alger pluck and Robert Louis Stevenson excitement is winning and rewards frequent reading. Steig's inimitable illustrations are just as terrific as the text. He manages to convey more with just a few watercolor tints and a wobbly black line than other artists do with a great deal more equipment (and less talent). Rewarding time and time again.

Rating:
Summary: Innappropriate for the intended age group
Review: This book is not appropriate for 5- to 8-year-olds in either content or context. Zeke, a pig, picks up a harmonica that he sees fall off a garbage truck and cleans it up, "using his father's schnapps as a disinfectant." Zeke then "regales" his his family "with the prelude to La Traviata". DO MOST PARENTS, LET ALONE 2nd GRADERS, KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS? Offended that family members fall asleep to his playing, Zeke leaves home. After putting others to sleep with his "supernatural" playing, Zeke "ponders his remarkable piece of garbage," falls asleep and dreams of his family's "agony" while they are missing him. "If I don't see [Zeke] soon," his mother wails in his dream, "I'll shoot myself." Zeke wakes up, crying, "reviling" himself for having lost faith in his family. He knows he must bring them "surcease of their sorrow" - now honestly, I have a bachelor's degree in journalism and I had to go look up "surcease." COME ON! On his way home, some unsavory characters, called "Samaritans," rob, kidnap, and tie him up, debating how to dispose of him. Drown him? Bake him? "We could have baked ham, ham sandwiches, chitlins, pig's knuckles, et cetera." ET CETERA?? He escapes, but "two nanoseconds later, a death-dealing coyote" pins him to the ground. Zeke plays a song on the harmonica, and "the wretched carnivore is rendered unconscious." Finally home, Zeke is greeted enthusiastically, and smothered with hugs for serenading children and patients to sleep in the Quayhogue (??) Hospital.

My 7-year-old struggled with a lot of the words in this book, and at the end of every page, looked up at me and said, "What does that mean?"