NANNY PIGGINS AND THE WICKED PLAN

If Amelia Bedelia and Mary Poppins raised a piglet, Nanny Piggins...could surely beat that pig in a cake-eating contest.

Australia's favorite porcine childcare worker returns in a new collection of adventures sure to entertain and possibly inspire envy in readers who'll wish she were their nanny. In the first tale, Nanny Piggins, former circus performer and abject worshipper of cake, and her charges, the three Green children (not to mention Nanny's brother, the dancing bear Boris), thwart the wicked plan of Mr. Green, penny-pinching tax attorney and father of the kids, to find a wife who'll do Nanny's job for free. Nanny does jury duty, and the jurors fall so deeply in love with her baking they conspire to lengthen the trial by never agreeing. She turns a game of pirates into a tunnel to China (to sample authentic Chinese food) only to end up breaking into a men's prison...even that doesn't end where one would expect. She fends off egotistical armadillos, gypsy queens and Buzzy Bee cookie salesgirls while making sure the children don't spend too much time in school. Santat's energetic, expressive and silly line drawings are the delectable icing on this confection.

Feisty, funny Nanny Piggins and her adoring charges will charm readers and listeners stateside, who'll be overjoyed there are five additional volumes already out Down Under.