Pigs Books

Toby is young, preschool mouse who enjoys playing and gets very twitchy if he's bored. Fortunately, he has a smart Mom who knows just how to help him! Watch Toby in this book as he jumps, plays and has fun in all sorts of ways.

The illustrations in this book are simple but fun. They perfectly convey Toby's feelings, which are the feelings of any preschooler at time. This is a fun, slice-of-life book to read to your kids, or have them read on their own as they begin to learn.

Our 2 year old foster son LOVES Toby. We read him this book every night and if we forget to read Toby he quickly reminds us! These book series are great!

My husband and I read to our 2 year old boy every night before tucking him in. He picks out a few books himself and settles in bed to listen to the stories. And every night, it never fails, he picks out Toby and Toby's Silly Faces! Always! He'll pick one or two other books as well, but always among those few books we find this little mouse face! He simply adores this creative little mouse. He even gets out of bed to have us help him do a hand stand like Toby! We adore the books from this author as well, finding her writing different from other authors. She is quite original, and has a style of her own. And her stories do not lack creativity! Toby is always asking interesting questions, and the answers to these questions is what keeps our son interested! We would recommend her books to anyone who wants to start reading bedtime stories to their 2 year olds. We started with other books, but he simply was not interested! Toby is what captivated him and keeps this great bedtime habit going. He has even asked for the other books about Toby the mouse (he saw the images of different books about Toby on the back of her book). By all means, try one of her books and I promise, your child will be hooked!

Toby (a young mouse) is bored. With his mother's help, he uses his imagination to discover new games to play with his toys. He exercises with his dinosaurs, holds up the world, and makes up a dinosaur song. After a picnic lunch he makes his dinosaurs go to sleep (and he falls asleep, too). Although Toby is billed as "Everyone's favorite toddler" young elementary school children will also identify with and enjoy him.

I love the world and want to share it with my little one. He's 5, and we both loved this book and it's gorgeous illustrations. Teaches a bit about adventure, art, Chinese culture and geography. Highly recommended. Also, The Snail and the Whale (by the team that did the Gruffalo) is another book that this reminds me, which we both recommend.

Tom Mouse by Ursula K. Le Guin is the story of Tom, a brave young mouse who dares board a train for the thriving city of Chicago. Tom befriends a young woman who, unlike most, does not shriek or shoo at the sight of a mouse; a friendship blossoms, that is wonderful enough to make a mouse dance. The soft color illustrations by Julie Downing add a friendly touch to this thoughtful and highly commended picturebook for young readers.

"Tom Mouse grew up in a hole in the wall of the diner in the station. His family was content with their cozy nest and the doughnut crumbs and bits of bacon they picked up in the diner. But Tom watched the great trains come into the station and leave again, and he wished he could go with them..." So begins Ursula Le Guin's sweet and lovely tale about a little mouse who yearns to leave home and see the big wide world he's heard so much about, and finds a companion to share his travels with. Tom kisses his family good-bye, scurries aboard a train headed for Chicago, and is off on what he hopes will be the beginning of a lifetime of adventures. Fortunately, he makes himself at home in Roomette Nine, along with its paying guest, Mrs Powers, an interesting and remarkable woman who, he finds, is not afraid of mice. In fact, she seems happy to have the company, and shares her snacks and conversation with Tom. As the trip continues these two form a special alliance, and decide together, that seeing the world would be even more fun and exciting with a friend..... Told in four short chapters, Ms Le Guin's simple, gentle text is complemented by Julie Brown's charming and expressive illustrations rendered in warm and soft, subdued tones. Together word and art bring this endearing little rodent and his story to life, and you can almost feel the motion of the train, and see the world rush by outside the window, as the train speeds on toward Chicago. Perfect for early readers, or as a read-aloud story the entire family can share together, Tom Mouse is a heartwarming and engaging tale of friendship and adventure that shouldn't be missed, and one of the best new pictures books of 2002.

What a wonderful story that captivated my children!! Not to mention that Julie Downing once again makes every story come alive with her illustrations. You can see the mouse dance and how she captured the twinkle in his eye was so fabulous!!! Any child will just love this book!!! Many thanks!

My now 4 yr old daughter (soon to be 5) first noticed Toot, Puddle & Opal in a Christmas special when she was 2. Every year, she watches that special. And, loves the books. They are among her favorites. I ordered this book in an author signed format for her, along with an Opal plush made for the book, and will be giving them to her for her birthday this year.

I love the books and show as well. This book would be a good read for any young reader.

My 4 year old daughter and I are big pig fans, and Toot & Puddle are among our favorites. This story is especially endearing. In it we are introduced to another sweet pig, Opal, who is Puddle's cousin. I enjoy this book because it reads more smoothly than some of the other Toot and Puddle books which rely on the charming pictures to carry the story. It is also a lovely story of friends working together to help out each other when Opal loses her first tooth.

Toot & Puddle are fantastic stories about two adorable pigs that highlight the differences in people and how they can get along, matched with equally rewarding illustrations resulting in perfect combinations. This time around add cousin Opal into the mix and I was reduced to a withering mass. This journey about a first loose tooth has got to be one of the best...if not the best...of the series. The expressions and actions come through loud and clear and the journey is one acted out everyday. And, well Opal is positively Charming!

Another fantastic book from Holly Hobbie and one I intend to be gifting as much as possible.

I found Charming Opal in a pile of recently published children's books at my favorite bookstore. It both caught my eye and stole my heart. A light hearted story of youthful "piglet" innocence and joyful discovery, Opal's protected world comes close to shattering. Her treasured loose tooth finally falls out, but is nowhere to be found. Without a tooth to place under her pillow, the Tooth Fairy would not come. Cousin Puddle and Toot do their best to reassure her that everything will be all right.
Author Holly Hobbie remembers what it is to be a child. By accurately portraying the excitement, innocence, and angst we all experienced, her readers are drawn into and become part of the story. They can feel Opal's joy as well as her pain. This story reflects the simple and uncluttered flow of a child's mind. No complications or hidden agendas. Holly Hobbie has written six other popular Toot & Puddle picture books.
Both author and illustrator, Holly Hobbie has worked as an artist for thirty years. Her skill is evident in every picture she draws. I consider Opal her most adorable character. The soft, gentle flow of both color and line add elements of warmth and comfort to the entire book. An excellent use of constrasting light and shadow intensify the mood and feeling the author is striving to portray. Text and illustrations are beautifully matched.
Of course, I shared this story with my class of kindergarteners and first graders. Their toothless grins and smiles confirmed how they felt and identified with the story!

My 7-year-old granddaughter loves the book, and I found it endearing.

I love the illustrations in all the Toot and Puddle books, the are lovely and calming, and so does my 4 year old son. We have several from the series and they all get read at bedtime regularly. The stories are sweet and have messages about friendship and perserverence. I would recommend them to anyone with a child over 3.

I love reading the Toot & Puddle books to my daughter. The art is beautiful and is full of details not found very often these days. This story has a moral and is a nice segue to the conversation about "being yourself." And who doesn't want that?

The only reason I wouldn't give this book 5 stars is because I enjoy the other Toot & Puddle books a little more. This one is just a bit too modern in it's content. The others tend to be more about core childhood and timeless values.

But still, the visuals are amazing.

Opal has decided to visit her friends Toot and Puddle at their home in Woodcock Pocket. However, instead of arriving by herself, Opal has brought along her new friend Daphne. Daphne is a very special pig who can do everything the best, including standing on her head, dancing, holding her breath, playing the violin, and more. This begins to make Opal a bit jealous, for she wants to be the best at something. However, when Opal begins outshining Daphne at various activities, the tables turn.

Once again, Holly Hobbie has created an endearing new tale featuring the little piggies of Woodcock Pocket and their lovely friends. Filled with gorgeous illustrations, along with lovely prose, and a message that will teach children that you can't always be the best at everything, as well as not to be jealous of someone when they can do something that you cannot, this is sure to be a hit with all. Including parents!

Erika Sorocco
Book Review Columnist for The Community Bugle Newspaper

Holly Hobbie is a wonderful writer! All of her books are great, but Wish You Were Here is our favorite. Not only are the illustrations beautifully done, but the story itself is hilarious. Every time my daughters and I read this, I can't help but laugh at the sight of the little pig who has turned blue because he has caught the 'violet virus' (by getting stung by the fierce-banded bush bee.) I can read this over and over without getting tired of it...and that's high praise from a Mom!

We are new to the Toot and Puddle Books, but we have fallen in love with them! Such cute characters and with a lot of adult humor in them too. Highly recommended!

My son got this book a few years ago. I believe he was around 3 when he got it. We've literally read it hundreds of times. He's read it by himself since he was about 4 years old. He loves the book. Toot and Puddle have become those characters that you go back to. They are funny, cute and become endearing. I can honestly say, as a mom of this 5 year old boy, that this is a must have book. It shows excellent examples of what friends are all about. The illustrations are adorable. There are tons of things to talk about in each illustration and larger words to look up the meanings to. A very good book that builds comprehension and begs the parent to teach your child the importance of questions. We love this book!

This is the first Toot & Puddle book I have read, and I am charmed. The characters are lovable and eccentric, depicted in vivid watercolor paintings that are simultaneously funny and gorgeous. The story is delightfully quirky, and, unlike many other books for this target age range, the language is not dumbed down for the reader. I am now a new Toot & Puddle fan - looking forward to reading the rest of the series.

This is the first book my baby reacted to with smiles and kicks of pleasure. She loves Wibbly pig. I like that the book encourages imaginative play. I'm sure we'll make a cushion mountain as soon as my baby is able to stay on top of one!

Wibbly Pig is, by actual scientific measurement, the cutest thing ever to exist on Earth. These books are wonderfully sweet-natured and simple, with illustrations so winning that fans of great cartoon art may want to get an extra copy for the grown-ups (I recommend the same tactic with Dr. Seuss books). There's something about Wibbly's winsome innocence, so affectingly portrayed in Mick Inkpen's masterful, uncluttered style, that is both cheery and very moving. Highly recommended for all ages.

This is another sweet book about the adventures of Wibbly Pig. My children love him! This is a book that helps kids think about what they can do. Wibbly Pig can build a tent, can you? It gives them some really fun ideas!

I'm constantly amazed at how the simplest books can have such an impact on children. Given just how much my son adores Hug and Tall, I shouldn't have been surprised that Wibbly Pig's adventures put a smile on his face.

In this book, Wibbly Pig uses everyday items (couch cushions, blankets, blocks, etc.) and his imagination to make towers, mountains, tents, and even control the weather (sort of). The message these cute illustrations and few short sentences leaves with children is that the amount of fun they can have every day is limited only by their imagination. As a veteran architect of various homemade tents, tunnels and hideouts, I am delighted to see a book that encourages this kind of play.

This is a great little book for toddlers (and their parents). The spark in my son's eye when he gets to the end of the book and asks me "what can YOU make?" is priceless.

Happy to see these in a collection, I may have duplicated some books, but that's very ok. We'll have Grammies books and our grand daughter can take the others home with her to enjoy! I'm so very thankful that Amazon had these. Sadly books are being replaced by electronic gizmos that our son calls "electronic parents so parents don't have to BE there". Pretty insightful for a 20 year old who grew up in the electronic age!

We love Disney and we love the Little Golden Books, so we couldn`t be more happy with this box. The stories have exactly the right length for a bedtime story and we read one almost every day.
The drawings are wonderful to look at and the hard cover prevents them from being torn.

I ordered a bunch of items on Amazon the same time as this; this arrived first, packaged, perfect.

It's hard to beat these old classics. Packaged together in a paper slipcase just like a DVD box set, these six Little Golden Books are exact reproductions of titles published in the 1940s and 1950s, with those same sweet stories, charming if somewhat muddy illustrations and, of course, cheap little cardboard covers. But quality issues aside, they're perfect for kids to spread out on the floor, read in bed or, of course, have read to them. One book, "Walt Disney's Mother Goose," is a collection of 32 short nursery rhymes illustrated with comparable scenes from Disney films and cartoons. It includes such rare tales as Bobby Shaftoe, Cross Patch, Deedle Deedle Dumpling, Jumping Joan and Little Betty Blue.

If you love the art in these books you should also check out Walt Disney's Classic Storybook. It's a keepsake hardback with most of these same stories and illustrations (and many more), but it's printed beautifully on quality gloss paper. In it, these illustrations are just stunning, with crisp lines and vivid colors.

This book has good pictures. I think the title is cool. When the little mouse said boo it was funny. It was interesting because the animals are afraid of a little mouse. It was not really scary.

My three year old grandson, then two. . .loved the excitement waiting for Big Bro. Because of the wonderful stories and comfortable illustrations by Jez Alborough, we have enjoyed and memorized other titles such as the "My Friend Bear" series.

This book My Friend the Bear by Jez Alborough is wonderfully
written . And Children will love the way a wonderful friendship
developes between a boy and a bear. This book teaching children
that no matter what your new friend looks like to look inside their heart, as Eddie the boy did when he and the bear became
friends. We all could learn alot from Eddie and the Bear about
being friendly to each other.

Lively illustrations in bright colors, combined with an engaging and increasingly aniticipatory text, make Jez Alborough's "Watch out! Big Bro's coming!" an excellent candidate for a Caldecot nod.

Especially note-worthy is Alborough's use of varying perspective to enhance the reader's feeling of escape into the story. When little bro' comes running back toward his frightened friends who are hiding in the jungle underbrush, we are looking out from our hiding spot as well.

A fine book, and one which breaks from the current trend of picture books aimed more for adult buyers than juvenile readers. I read this for story hour the day I received it and the toddler crowd loved it.

Highly recommended.

We always buy books as souvenirs from our vacations, and this is one of our favorites. Kids can relate to the little mouse hiding in Orville Wright's pocket on the first flight. They love how he figures out how to steal the cheese without getting caught in the brothers' traps. But it also gives kids a real feeling of how exciting it must have been to be there for the first flight! Plus it's a good introduction of what a reporter does to cover a good story. A very sweet book!

Wow! I loved this book - it made me feel like I was right there with the Wright Brothers. Please read this book to your kid or have them read it. ED (7 years old)

The somewhat bland cover hides a beautifully illustrated book about "Wee" --a young mouse who lives with his family in the Wright Brothers' Dayton, Ohio bicycle shop. French illustrator Bernadette Pons' composition, and use of detail, light, and soft, shaded color gives an early Disney-look to her mostly lively pictures. (The beige sand of Kitty Hawk and the Brothers' somewhat plain inventor-wear contrast with the more vivid and 3-dimensional look of the mouse's habitat.)

Writer Timothy Gaffney is an aviation journalist and pilot, as well as a friend of the Wright family. His enthusiasm for his subject shows in the accurate and interesting narrative, which highlights the testing (progressing from kites to gliders to their first plane, "Flyer"), and his detailed description of the Flyer's first day aloft. Wee is a journalist himself, writing stories for his family's "Mouse News." At first, I thought this was an unnecessary subplot, but it provides a Wee a motive for following the Wright brothers to the testing grounds of Kitty Hawk. Wee eventually sneaks on board the Flyer, and he and the reader share the adventure and excitement of the Wright Brothers' feat.

Gaffney includes a brief biography about the brothers (which includes some scientific details about the plane), and two paragraphs about a mouse discovered by the Wrights at their Kitty Hawk encampment. As described in the story, Orville tried setting traps for the "wee" mouse, only to find that it had repeatedly the cornbread bait. (Many years later, the inventor wrote about the inventive mouse.) This is a cleverly written and illustrated book that adds interest and personality to the Wright Brothers' most famous accomplishment.

The year is 1903, and Wee is a journalist mouse who writes and publishes the Mouse News alongside his beloved wife and children in a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio. The very same bicycle shop that is owned and run by Wilbur and Orville Wright. At the time being, the two brothers are working on a machine called the Flyer, which they hope will be able to transport people through air in the future. When they head towards Kitty Hawk, Wee knows that he must tag-along in order to break the news to his avid readers. And who knows, perhaps Wee will even get the chance to take flight himself.

In this wonderful new children's book, author Timothy R. Gaffney introduces first-time readers to the Wright Brothers', as well as a cute, yet quirky character named Wee. Gaffney's descriptions of building the Flyer, and testing it out are vivid and descriptive, while Bernadette Pons' illustrations are absolutely gorgeous, and coincide magnificently with the story. Overall this is a must-have book for any children interested in flying, as it gives a brief history lesson, and will take them on a fun reading adventure.

Erika Sorocco
Book Review Columnist for The Community Bugle Newspaper

I've found the "When I Feel..." series to be very helpful for my son. He's interested in feelings and going through all these books have been invaluable in teaching him how to spot these emotions in himself as well as others. This is a wonderful teaching tool.

This is an excellent series for children as young as 3. Good content, wonderful illustrations and good parent suggestions. My school system has decided to use them in our 4 yr. preschool classes.

She loves the "When I Feel" series - These are the only books she picks out of the plethora of books to choose from. When I read to her and turn pages, she will have me stop at a particular page (when they lose something valuable to them), she says, "Oh, kiss" - gives a kiss then "big hug" - leans her body towards the character pretending to hug him. Very cute (hard to explain via text). She actively tries to console me when I pretend to be sad as a result of reading this book.

This is an adorable book with absolutely delightful illustrations!!