Book Reviews by Carol Neeland for LS 5603: Literature for Children and Young Adults

The Old Woman and Her Pig  by Eric Kimmel

Illustrated by Giora Carmi

Plot Summary:

An old woman finds a penny and uses it to buy herself a pig. On their way home they come to a wall and in the wall there is a stile. The pig refuses to go over the stile. The old woman tries to coax a dog to bite the pig so the pig will go over. The dog refuses. The woman tries to coax a stick to hit the dog, but it won’t. As the story goes on the problem grows more complicated with the woman trying to enlist help from cows, cats, and even a rope. Finally, she is able to get what she needs; the pig goes over the stile and the last page sees her safely at home with her pig.

Critical Analysis: 

Eric Kimmel does not pretend that his version of this British folktale is true to the original version. In a note before the title page he states, “This version isn’t intended to replace the original, but rather to provide a lighter alternative.” In the original story the rat gets killed instead of chased and the butcher gets hanged. Tunnell and Jacobs might argue that this lightening up of the traditional tale isn’t necessary. They state, “Some adults feel they can circumvent the problem of frightening children by choosing softened versions of fairy and folktales. This approach may have the opposite effect, causing children to become more distressed.” (Tunnell and Jacobs, p. 111)  

In the case of The Old Woman and Her Pig I have to disagree. The big, bad wolf was big and bad. The wicked witch was wicked. They deserve to have bad things happen to them. As a parent I appreciate not having to explain to my five year old why the butcher had to be hanged. He was just an innocent bystander; that wouldn’t sit well with his sense of justice. That kind of arbitrary violence really is the fodder of nightmares. 

I had no qualms about reading Kimmel’s version of the story to my son. It is funny, the language is superb, and nobody gets hurt. There aren’t any bad guys in the story so there is no need for them to be punished. In some ways, it’s a Noodlehead tale. Did the old woman really have to go to all that trouble to get the pig over the stile? Could she have just hit the pig with the stick instead of the dog? Why didn’t she just pick the stick up and do it herself?  

The illustrations are one of the most fascinating parts of the book. My five year old son, who can’t read, was looking through it and saying, “Look, all the things in this book have eyes! Look, Mom, the blocks have eyes! A bush with eyes. And the clouds!” He also pointed out that the first letter of each paragraph is an animal. After discovering that, he went through all the pages again to look at those pictures. When I read him the book he learned that on each page the characters say NO and the NO is illustrated. He traced that word with his finger on each page. The story is funny, but the illustrations are what make this book special. Watching my son “read” this book made me wonder if we miss out on details like these when we learn to read. Luke is the best audience for picture books because he has a heightened awareness of what is shown through the pictures. My focus is generally on the text. For example, on the last page he pointed to the stairs and said, “So little stairs.” He’s right; the old woman and the pig shown in the windows are freakishly large compared to the stairs and to the entire house. 

One thing troubled me about the text in this book. When the old woman speaks she doesn’t use articles: 

“Cat, Cat chase Rat. Rat won’t gnaw Rope. Rope won’t lasso Rider. Rider won’t quench Fire…” 

I really want it to say “Cat, Cat chase the Rat. Rat won’t gnaw the Rope. Rope won’t lasso the Rider. Rider won’t quench the Fire…” 

Did Kimmel mean for the old woman to sound uneducated? Or was leaving out the articles a way to further personify the animals, rope, stick, etc.? I noticed that Horse, Water, Fire, Dog, Stick, etc. are capitalized as if they were proper nouns. Used that way, the articles wouldn’t be necessary, but it still sounds strange to me. 

Finally, I noticed that some of the important parts of the illustrations are lost in the folds of the pages. This is particularly true for the page with the rider on it. When I read Talking with Artists I learned how important it is for illustrators to be cognizant of where on the page the illustrations are. This book is filled with such amazing pictures; it’s a shame that the book has to be bent backward to see the details on some pages. 

Review Excerpt: 

Here is an excerpt from a School Library Journal review: 

Kimmel’s books are always welcome for their potential storyhour use, and this rendition of a standard English folktale is no exception. … Carmi’s colorful illustrations are wild, crazy, and full of life; they catch the spirit immediately. … Putting aside reservations about the necessity of watering down folktales, the volume is bursting with fun, and will certainly be well loved by children and storytellers alike.– Judy Constantinides,
East Baton Rouge Parish Main Library, LA 

Connections: 

If I were teaching The Old Woman and Her Pig to a class I would ask my students to help me create a class story based on this cumulative model. We’d take a tour around the school and the neighborhood and talk about what elements we could incorporate into the story. Each child could do one of the illustrations. Taking it a step further, we could scan the pages and each child could read and record the text that accompanies her illustration. This way we could share our version of this folktale with classes around the world. 

Bibliographic Data:

Constantinides, Judy. “The Old Woman and Her Pig.” School Library Journal (1992), http://reviews.schoollibraryjournal.com/bd.aspx?isbn=0823409708&pub=sl (accessed February 17, 2008). 

Jacobs, Joseph. English Fairy Tales. http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/eft/eft05.htm (accessed February 17, 2008). 

Kimmel, Eric, and Giora Carmi. The Old Woman and Her Pig. 1 ed. New York: Holiday House, 1992. ISBN Number: 0-8234-0970-8

Tunnell, Michael, and James S. Jacobs. Children’s Literature, Briefly. 3 ed. Columbus: Pearson Education, 2004.

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