A Pig Is Big

The simple rhymes in A Pig is Big are perfect for early readers, and the colorful illustrations demonstrate the sizes of different things by artfully fitting them together in each picture. The little hints before revealing "What is big?" or "What is bigger than a pig?" let readers have fun guessing what comes next.

A Pig is Big is a wonderful concept book to help children learn the size and scale of things in the world (and universe). It would be fun to use in a story circle where students could talk with each other about what is going to be bigger in each successive picture.

In my opinion this book is great. When I picked the book up I didn’t realize it was a informational poem. The writing is organized and does a good job describing size of pigs, a neighborhood, a city and etc. Throughout the book, they use a rhyme scheme either AABB or ABB. I really enjoyed some one the lines including “A truck can haul a car that’s stuck, That’s stuck in all the mud – back luck”. Rhyming brings a smile to my face. I really enjoy the language also used in the book. It is very patterned and the rhyming scheme is easy to follow. It keeps the reader continually flowing through the pages. The author asks a question from like “What’s bigger than a street” and then he answers, “ You could, answer a show more neighborhood”. Throughout the book the author asks a question and answers in poem form. The illustrations do a good job at showing the reader the concept of size. They give an overview of the size of things like a neighborhood than a city and finishing with a awesome picture of the universe. The plot/main idea to the story was to show children the concept of size and there is always something bigger. The big idea however was to students that compared to the universe everything is small. Gives students a feel of what is really out there, and what we see on a regular day are nothing compared to the universe. show less

This is a short, but sweet book that teaches degrees of comparison. The illustrations are necessary since they compare objects to show which is one bigger and which one is the biggest. I like the way the words on the last page get smaller.

I think that Douglas Florian did a great job in writing and illustrating, “A Pig is Big.” The first thing that I liked about this book was how it was organized. The book talked about how things compare in size. As the book progressed, the things that the author was comparing progressively got bigger. For example, the book started out with a pig being big, and then went to talk about how a cow is bigger than a pig, and so forth. The book ended with the universe being the biggest thing of all. I also liked the subtleness of the illustration on the opening and ending pages. The illustration on the opening page was of a pig giving a hug symbolizing the author giving a hug to his daughter because that’s who the book was written for. show more The illustration on the ending page was of stars in the shape of a pig. This relates to the fact that the ending of the book was about the universe being the biggest thing of all the earth. Also, the illustration on the title page is of a pig on top of the world. This illustration ties in the fact that a pig is big, and although the world is bigger than a pig it emphasizes the fact that the pig is the main character or idea of the book. Even though there are other things (cow, truck, city, earth, etc.) in the book that are bigger than a pig, the pig on the second page is still bigger than all of the other illustrations in the book to once again tie in the idea that the pig is the central idea of the book. A final thing aspect that I liked about this book was the words on the last page of the book. For the last page of the book the universe is described as the biggest thing of all, yet it is depicted as a small illustration. The illustration is tied in with the words on the page that say, “Compared to it all things seem small.” The letters “seem small” are comparatively smaller than the other words in the phrase. This supports the idea that the world makes other things feel little. The central message of this book is that the size of things around us depends on our perception of them. Also, the central message is related to the idea that the size of something depends on its size compared to other things. show less

A great concpet book. The illustrations were fun but a little messy. ( I wouldn't nominate it for a Caldecott Medal or honor). But the ideas were there and it was easy to follow with words that were easy for it's age group to understand. A great book for teaching the concept of "bigness".

A book about a big pig and everything that is bigger than him. It asks the reader and audience to guess what is bigger and bigger until you get to the biggest thing of all, the universe.

The whimsical artwork is eye catching. You can’t wait to turn the page to see what the next comparison is going to be. The story rhymes which makes this fun to read along with the pictures.