Do Pigs Have Stripes?
By Melanie Walsh
(HMH Books, Board Book, 9780395987964, 28pp.)
Publication Date: October 1999
Other Editions of This Title: Hardcover
Categories: Animals - General
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Do monkeys tweet? Do pigs have stripes? Find out for sure in these delightful board books. A series of questions and bright, simple illustrations prompt readers and listeners to guess the answers. Little ones will clamor to participate and to show off their newly acquired knowledge of animal sounds and characteristics.
After studying at the Harrow School of Art and the Royal College of Art, Melanie Walsh worked as a textile designer before writing and illustrating children's books. In addition to receiving many fine reviews, she won the Parents Choice Gold Award for Do Pigs Have Stripes? Melanie lives in London and has two young twin sons.
Walsh asks the kinds of questions that leave preschoolers in stitches: "Are these the antlers of a monkey?" Part of the hilarity comes from knowing the answer and waiting for the turn of the page to reveal it, and part comes from the incongruous mental images of monkeys with antlers, mice with spiky green tails, and porcupines spotted like Holstein cows. Walsh wisely never shows the animals mixed up, and she accompanies the off-the-wall inquiries, which appear in large, black letters, with boldly colored, comical paintings. The effect is clean, graphically charged, and funny. Walsh ends on an upbeat note, asking a question ("Does a giraffe have a long thin neck?" ) that will elicit a resounding "Yes!" from story hour groups.
March 1, 1996 Booklist, ALA
"Walsh (Do Pigs Have Stripes?, 1996) again asks preschoolers questions to which they probably know the answers, but that doesn't mean they're a snap. Do horses bark? No, dogs do,' although the horse in the picture does hold a bone in its mouth. Tickling small funnybones, Walsh lures little ones into the swing of things, for each question requires a resounding No!'--each question but the surprising final one, because owls do go hoot in the middle of the night. Bright, large images in a childlike scrawl of lines and flat planes of color, combined with the book's reiterated invitation to participate, make it a perfect candidate for story hours. The simplicity of presentation masks the book's complex wit and trickiness: Children will love it. (Picture book. 4-7) Burning questions of the animal world are answered here: Does a bird have a big black wet nose? Does a fish have a long tongue? With a loud No' to every question but one, Walsh's debut acts less as a primer in zoology than as a template of the question-and-answer format. It may be a toddler's first quiz book. Simple, Lucy Cousins-like illustrations reinforce the regularly paced queries, with rough forms against bright backgrounds. The work is easily mastered, and doesn't bear rereading, but certainly has its charms. (Picture book. 3-5)" Kirkus Reviews
"Sure to elicit giggles." Publishers Weekly
"Begs to be shared aloud." Horticulture Magazine
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