Thursday, March 14, 2019

Put on Your PJs, Piggies! Illustrated by Sydney Hanson

Put on Your PJs, Piggies! is a not-quite-square board book that walks though nighttime routines, including little piggies stalling for more time. A bedtime snack is followed by a bath, then into PJs. The little piggies sing their nighttime song, say their prayers, count sheep, and then fall asleep. The daddy pig helps them through their routine and is mentioned in the text. The mommy pig is shown in the illustrations during the nighttime song, prayers, and sleep time.

One of the little piggies is much smaller than the rest and the littlest pig is my favorite part of this book. The littlest pig is too small to know to close her eyes during the prayer and continues her wide-eyed laying pose that she has throughout the entire story. The funniest part is on the last spread where every other animal in the barn is sleeping, but the littlest piggie is still wide awake.

Each spread features a four line stanza of rhyming couplets. Each also has a phrase about PJs: "Almost PJ time, piggies!" "Get ready for PJs, piggies!" "Time for PJs, piggies!" "Put on your PJs, piggies!" However, even after the piggies have put on their PJs, the "Put on your PJs, piggies!" line is repeated five more times. It doesn't really make much sense, especially after the piggies have already fall asleep.

The illustrations are very well done. There are lots of little details that make them very enjoyable, like bubbles from the bath s\till apparent on the grass in the next spread while the piggies are putting on their PJs.

Other animals that appear in the illustrations include a calf and its mother, a foal with a parent, a cat, a baby mouse with parent, and a sheep family of one parent with three small sheep. The front cover features some spot slitter on the piggies PJs and on the moon.

Overall, it's a cute book, but the text, especially the repetition of "Put on your PJs, piggies!" is a little disappointing. Repetition can be a positive feature in a board book, but I was not a fan of how it was carried out in Put on Your PJs, Piggies! It was much more effective in Sydney Hanson's other Bedtime Barn Book, Go to Sleep, Sheep! because the repetition happened in the middle with a different first and last page message. The sheep family featured in Put on Your PJs, Piggies! will be very familiar to anyone who's read Go to Sleep, Sheep!

I received a copy of this book from the publisher, but was not required to post a positive review.

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