The Pig, the Elephant, and the Wise-Cracking Bird

by Michael Sampson, Bonnie J. Johnson, Joshua Sampson (Illustrator)

Overview

Meet Ogden Oink, a fun-loving, adventurous, likeable piglet. He dresses and speaks as humans do, gets into more than his fair share of difficulties because he interprets figurative expressions literally, and he does not understand various meanings of polysemous (i.e., multiple-meaning) words.

A studious-looking, somewhat didactic bird appears throughout near the edges of the pages to add even more figurative language to the story. The "language confusion" humor will get young readers thinking about language-and laughing, too.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781612546018
Publisher:	Brown Books Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/08/2023
Pages:	40
Product dimensions:	10.00(w) x 10.00(h) x (d)
Lexile:	570L (what's this?)
Age Range:	5 - 10 Years

About the Author

Michael Sampson taught kindergarten through fourth grade before meeting fellow literacy expert Bill Martin Jr at a conference at the University of Arizona, where he was earning a PhD in Literacy. They established a lifelong friendship and collaborated on many bestselling and award-winning books for children, including Armadillo Antics, Ten Little Squirrels, and Chicka Chicka 1, 2, 3. A professor at St. John's University, Sampson worked as a Fulbright Scholar to Ukraine in 2021-22, teaching English as New Language strategies to elementary, middle school, and university students.

Bonnie J. Johnson earned her PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She teaches classes in the School of Education at St. John's University in New York City. Dr. Johnson was a public-school classroom teacher for fourteen years. She was the recipient of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Distinguished Teacher of Teachers Award and was named an Eminent Literacy Scholar by The e-Journal of Literacy and Social Responsibility. Dr. Johnson is the author, coauthor, editor of nine books, numerous book chapters and journal articles, and has coauthored more than two hundred instructional texts for elementary, middle school, and adult learners.

Joshua Sampson is from a small town in northeast Texas. During the summers of his childhood, he was surrounded by children's book illustrators and authors while traveling the nation with his family to host teacher's conferences. These summers, filled with educators, stories, and songs, helped set him upon a path toward a multi-faceted art career. He went on to graduate with a BFA from UT Austin, and earned his MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Joshua's illustrations are playful and imaginative. Inspired by his love of storytelling, along with the books and illustrators he grew close to as a child, he helps guide the reader through Ogden Oink's adventures in a world quite different from our own. Now living and working in Los Angeles, Joshua maintains a varied art practice involving painting, music, and sculpture. He has worked in film and television on critically acclaimed movies and shows such as Minari (2020), and the live-action reboot of Fairly Oddparents (2022). Now he brings his artistic contributions to storytelling through The Pig, the Elephant, and the Wise-Cracking Bird!

Editorial Reviews

2023-06-08
It’s all in the interpretation.

On Friday afternoon, Ogden Oink remembers that his mother’s birthday is on Monday; he has to quickly earn money for a gift. Noticing a “Help Wanted” sign at a detective agency, the young pig applies for the job and is hired immediately. His mission: find a missing baby zoo elephant. He’s given a set of “detective rules”: “Pinch pennies.” “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” “Stay ahead of the game.” “Don’t spill the beans.” “Don’t get cold feet.” “Put on your thinking cap.” But Ogden doesn’t understand idiomatic expressions. Taking these rules literally, he empties his bank for pennies to pinch, places eggs in separate baskets, ties a checker board to his ankle, and so on. Ogden initially fails at locating the pachyderm. Meanwhile, a smart-alecky bird offers additional figurative expressions on every page; these are generally intended as comments on the proceedings. Keen-eyed readers will observe the elephant surreptitiously hiding in some illustrations as Ogden goes about his unsuccessful detecting. This is a thin, almost plotless story, its main purpose being a lesson in idioms. Slight humor arises from readers’ understanding the difference between Ogden’s literal interpretations and the expressions themselves. Kids who don’t comprehend the idiomatic language won’t get the point, but a glossary explains it. The loosely drawn, colorful, lively line illustrations, depicting an all-animal cast, look amateurish. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

An attempt at witty wordplay that doesn’t quite come together. (Picture book. 6-9)

Kirkus Reviews