The Pig of Happiness

"he is so happy"

I first read this, borrowed from my sister, at a time when I had been struggling with depression for over a decade. It made me happy and it made me smile - a fairly major occurrence then! Not exactly an instant cure, but in its own little way it helped.

It's short, it's sweet and it might make you smile. What more of a recommendation do you need?

Simplistic illustrations allow the philosophical message to shine through without being preachy. Appropriate for all ages.

Until just now, when I was researching Edward Monkton to write this review, I didn't know anything about the author or the books. I'd previously read one of his books, the one entitled Love and I didn't quite get it because there seemed to be some joke behind it that I was missing. Now that I know the author is actually Giles Andreae, the man behind Purple Ronnie; I can now see the similarity in the drawing style of the two creations, but I think that the ideas behind the two entities are quite different. The only reason I happened to pick up this book because it was a present that my sister had received and I was curious about the contents of a book with such a title. I flipped through the pages and within the space of about five show more minutes, I had read the entire thing.

The book itself is very short. It consists of 32 pages (according to Amazon) but I think that total probably includes the title page and the other pages that don't actually have any of the story on them. The story itself takes up very few pages at all. It has a crudely drawn cartoon style picture on one side and accompanying text on the other. Think of something like a slightly larger version of a Mr Man book, and you'll be on the right track.

It's hard to really comment on the plot of the story because to summarise the plot would be to tell the entire story - it's just that short! There's probably more words in this review than there is in the entire book! It's pretty much a simple philosophical tale, a modern-day parable if you will. At least that's the description from Amazon. It is a nice little story, with a nice inspirational moral at the end and the kind of thing that you could read whenever you need a lift or a bit of a kick in the arse to get motivated. Personally, that sort of book is not really to my taste, but it was a nice little story all the same. show less

BEST. BOOK. EVER. Made me smile...then laugh. Definitely a positive book.