Ups and downs with Oink and Pearl

by Kay Chorao

Piglet Oink concocts an unusual birthday present for his sister Pearl, helps her escape from a witch, and ignores her advice on a mail-order movie projector.

Genres: Childrens

63 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Kay Chorao is a children's writer and illustrator.

She was born Ann McKay Sproat in Elkhart, Indiana, United States, into a middle-class, suburban family. She loved and was encouraged to draw at a young age. She attended Laurel School in Shaker Heights, OH. Chorao went to Wheaton College, where in 1958 she earned a Bachelor of Arts in art history. After that, Chorao pursued her graduate study at Chelsea School of Art from 1958 to 1959.

Chorao got married and had three sons before moving to New York with her family. From 1966 to 1968, she studied book illustration at School of Visual Arts in New York.

Besides writing self-illustrated children's books, Chorao has been the illustrator for many books by Jane Yolen, Judith Viorst, Jan Wahl, and Marjorie Sharmat.

Reviews

[Michael Fitzgerald]

On the cover, these look like nice respectable neo-Victorian pigs, with caps and bonnets. Inside, however, we get strong traces of modern consumerism - particularly in the gastronomic sphere. The first story involves creating a "super-fizz ice-cream soda." The second has Oink eating three boxes of sugar cereal ("Monster Munch") to send away boxtops for a dumb prize. The (very bizarre) third story ends with a trip to the ice cream store for a chocolate double-decker cone with sprinkles. I'm no crunchy vegan by any means, but it all seems a bit much. I guess they are *pigs* - but will young readers get that subtlety? When authors/illustrators succumb to the "let's just use animals instead of people" thing (it deflects all those "lack of diversity" accusations), they can't have the animals being animals anymore.

And didn't anyone ever tell Kay Chorao that it's not a good idea to write on an empty stomach?

I like Chorao's illustration style here, with its appealing color scheme, but the stories themselves aren't really of any quality. A shame.

[Ammie]

We laughed so much on this one.

[Dolly]

A fun book about pig siblings. Our girls really enjoyed listening to me read this one aloud. I found it to be a bit odd, especially the story about the "witch," but our girls liked it.