Gruntle Piggle and her parents are city pigs who live on the 10th floor of the Pig’s Digs. When Gruntle’s grandfather Streaky Bacon sends her a pair of rollerblades, she is determined to thank him. Grandpa is a country pig who lives on a farm, wears no clothes, eats swill, and hates reading, and Gruntle’s mother is convinced he’d be a bad influence on her daughter. Determined to find out how a “real pig” lives, Gruntle takes a bus to the country to visit her grandfather. To her dismay, she finds that she can’t bring herself to roll in the manure, and the swill makes her gag. And when she mentions reading, Grandpa flies into a rage. Gruntle angrily returns to the city. But later, she realizes that Grandpa probably hates reading because he cannot read, and she is determined to return to the farm to teach him how.

This is an amusing story that plays with the disjunction between the conventions of “talking animal” stories and the realities of animal life. There are plenty of wry jokes in the text (many of which will require some explanation): Gruntle’s mother is named Frances Bacon-Piggle, her father teaches Pig Latin, and Gruntle keeps her cash in a kiddy bank. Johnny Wales’ earth-tone illustrations combine retro 1940s objects (old cars and phones, manual typewriters) with contemporary ones (roller-blades, a computer) to create an intriguing visual mix of detail. Wales skillfully captures the mood of old “Hogtown” (Toronto), and his use of aerial views adds interest to several scenes.

Unfortunately, the book ends too soon, before Gruntle can forge a peace between her mother and grandfather, and we are left to wonder if Gruntle will succeed – or indeed if she has misdiagnosed the problem altogether. Nevertheless, there is enough clever humour in this tale to tickle the funny bones of pig fans young and old.