WILL YOU READ TO ME?

Cazet offers a gently droll mood piece in a departure from his wackier offerings. Hamlet, the poetic pig, doesn’t fit in. In a clean shirt and tennis shoes (“What kind of pig wears a clean shirt?”), he leans over the fence and asks his mother if she’ll read to him from his new book. He also offers to read the poem he’s just finished to his wallowing family. They tease him about having a twin named Eggs (he doesn’t), and perk up only when the farmer brings dinner. Undaunted, Hamlet walks to the nearby pond, where he watches the rising moon and talks to his reflection—which he decides is Eggs. He reads his newest poem, and a band of grinning frogs appears to listen. As the darkness settles in, he reads more and more, his poems as charming as those of Russell Hoban’s Frances the Badger. Eggs doesn’t respond, which disturbs Hamlet. But a contented smile comes to his face when dozens of creatures request more reading; Hamlet complies. Watercolor and colored pencils add warmth to Cazet’s bittersweet ode to the bibliophilic misfit in every reader. (Picture book. 4-7)