The Super Amazing Adventures of Me, Pig by Emer Stamp
| The Super Amazing Adventures of Me, Pig by Emer Stamp | |
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| Category: Confident Readers | |
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Reviewer: John Lloyd
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| Summary: A riotous sequel, with just as much fun and invention as the first, with perhaps even more delights for all. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 192 | Date: October 2014 |
| Publisher: Scholastic | |
| ISBN: 9781407136387 | |
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Hello.
I is Pig and I has one book out already. In it I tells you in diary form about how I ends up on a spaceship that EVIL CHICKENS make out of a tractor. I cannot speak human but I knows the bookbag really likes my first book. So now I has a second. In the past I has problems with an evil farmer who wants to put me in a pie but now all I has is happiness and peace. I even has a new best friend called Kitty the Cat. But my old best friend Duck is telling me Kitty is not the best new best friend I can have. How is Duck right and how is I wrong?
Yes, you do have to struggle to resist the temptation of mimicking the brilliant voice of Pig in reviewing these books – and anyone who has read them will tell you it's really not that simple at all to copy the breezy ease and wackiness of the style Emer Stamp successfully maintains throughout his fast-moving pages. But it's not just the weird voice of our hero that makes the books stand out so much. Nor is it the blocky card-bound format, or the excellent and simple illustrations. It's not even just the multiple fonts that all the different species speak and write in. It's all of those, and some sterling work to make the plots completely enjoyable, with both inventive storylines and fart-propelled action.
The young readers this aims for (and surely never misses) will be itching on their chairs in glee at the sight of Pig being so completely naïve about his new friend Kitty. But what is he to make of the cat's promise to get the birds to reduce the noise of their dawn chorus with a quiet night-time visit or two? Kitty, what's more, is nothing to do with the old farmer, as the humans in the story are two new, veggie-loving characters, and if Pig knew to call them hippies then he would. There's possibly a little too much made of Duck's frustration at Pig's choice of friends, but that's like two pages too much, and at the speed this joyous fiction is consumed, it's hardly worth the worry.
There are great nuances of the farmyard animals interacting (the Cow who can't really speak with any other creature for grammatical errors, and just getting the letters the wrong way round); there are great call-backs for unusual details at the most surprising times (just what is Kitty using the contents of those bottles for?!) and there are brilliant instances of the book mirroring what happened last time. I did find the ending sort of dwindled, but in this instance it's like the calm before the storm, and the set-up before the cinema lights go up demanding we return for the sequel. So again that's hardly worth mentioning as a problem either – any further chances to enter the sheer brilliance of the world of these books is only to be seized with equally fart-propelled gusto.
I must thank the publishers for my review copy. We also have a review of The Seriously Extraordinary Diary of Pig by Emer Stamp.
The Unbelievable Secret Diary of Pig is the first in the series, which the volume under perusal never once officially refers to. Part two is more or less self-contained, but why ration yourself to just the one instance of brilliance? For more wacky animals on adventures, you may enjoy Chicken Mission: Danger in the Deep Dark Woods by Jennifer Gray.
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You can read more book reviews or buy The Super Amazing Adventures of Me, Pig by Emer Stamp at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy The Super Amazing Adventures of Me, Pig by Emer Stamp at Amazon.com.
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