Poof and the Piglet is a homemade picture book written and illustrated by a 10-year-old who was given the title as inspiration. The 10-year-old has also been taught universal story structure.
Poof is the star of an entire series of books. Sometimes she has a sidekick called Worm-hoop (an English owl). This time Worm-hoop is replaced by a pig. I think she may have been influenced by the Elephant and Piggie series.
She has played with lettering on the front cover, understanding that one of the stand out features of pigs is their curly tails.
Inciting incident
A single tree is used to stand in for a larger setting. This is a story in the minimalist tradition.
The size of the tree suggests both Poof and the piglet came towards each other. They want to be friends.
Here they are not doing anything but their faces say it all.
Plan
Poof adopts the piglet so they can always be together. But she is wrong about that. The best plans in stories involve the main character being wrong about something at the beginning of the story.
Poof is treating the pig as one might a dog. She gives him a collar with his name on it. But in the next image she is feeding him a bottle of milk, showing that she has upped her relationship from ‘pet’ to ‘baby’.
Interesting intratext with ‘Pigs in Area’. I wonder if this is inspired by Baby On Board signs in cards.
Now for the Battle. A feature of Poof is that her eyes are often wayward. This must be deliberate because the eyeballs of other characters are not wayward.
I love the body language. The mother takes her piglet away under her arm.
Poof now has slightly manga-ish eyes and she is crying. She faces the viewer so we can see she is crying.
ANAGNORISIS
This is the Anagnorisis phase of the story in which she remembers all the good times they had together. The illustrator is making use of comic convention with the thought bubble, and the juxtaposition between happy and sad emotions.
This is a bit of a twist ending, but unlike most twist endings, this one is nice. The pig is approaching Poof as if he is a dog. This is a more appropriate relationship. This will never be Poof’s baby and she has realised that now.
The writer has not yet learned to keep verb tenses in agreement.
Quite a few picture books end like this, with a sunset.
There were extra pages in the homemade booklet so she had the idea to fill them up with snapshots of Poof and Porky in their new life as friends.
