Roland the Minstrel Pig by William Steig
The publisher says… Roland the pig plays the lute and sings so sweetly that his friends never have enough of listening to him. He has bigger dreams, though, so he decides to take his show on the road and share his music with the world. He has a hard time finding an audience and is lonely at first, but then a fox named Sebastian appears and offers to take him to perform before the King. Little does Roland know, Sebastian actually plans on eating him.
Eva says… So I’ve read a bunch of books by this guy and they’re ALL great. And I liked them when I was real little and I still like them NOW. Because here’s why. They’re picture books but they have more words than normal picture books, so they’re not super easy. So right now they’re JUST RIGHT. And plus they’re all fairy tales, kind of, with talking animals and magic and stuff like that. And I kind of like those kinds of stories every once in a while.
And plus there’s this too: that this guy’s drawings are REAL GOOD. His animals talk but they look REAL and they aren’t all fakey and cute. And that’s REAL important. Because when you read a story, you want to believe it could really happen, and if the animals look like toys or cartoons, it just ruins it.
I mean, sometimes you want your animals to be funny. Just don’t get carried away is all I’m saying.
Anyway this is another real good story by this guy about a singing pig named Roland who wants to be famous, and so he goes out on an adventure where he meets this SNEAKY FOX named Sebastian who tries to trick him and EAT him. And I kind of don’t like it that some of these writers make FOXES sneaky all the time. But it is just a story. And plus, everyone knows that pigs are WAY too big for foxes. Foxes like to eat rabbits and mice and fresh fruit and other stuff they can carry in their mouths. And I don’t think that a FOX can carry a PIG. But a PIG could carry a FOX!!
And I don’t want to make TOO big a deal out of it, but this is three books of this guy’s that I’ve read that had SNEAKY FOXES in it. And even in one of the others a fox tried to trick ANOTHER pig and eat HIM. (The Amazing Bone)
But I like everything else about this guy’s books so I’m not going to make a big deal out of it.
I think I might need to read ALL this guy’s books. And he has a LOT of them so it looks like I have my work cut out for me. But we already got all the ones they have in the library.
So this is a good one even with the sneaky fox stuff.
Eva’s rating: ♥♥♥♥ (out of five)
(Roland The Minstrel Pig by William Steig. Published by Square Fish/MacMillan. ISBN 978-1250057624)
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