Ginger and Petunia

Title: Ginger and Petunia
Author and Illustrator: Patricia Polacco
Publisher and date of Publication: The Penguin Group, 2007
Genre: Juvenile Fiction, Picture Book
Age Range: K-3rd Grade

Summary: This is a story about Ginger and her pet pig, Petunia. Ginger dresses in fancy clothes, has a fancy car, and attended fancy meetings. Her motto is, "you are what you wear." She also teaches piano lessons all day. She treats her pig, Petunia like her daughter and had a mud hole
put in her backyard with a gazebo over it. Ginger got invited to a meeting in London and called someone to come take over her responsibilities at home. After Ginger left for London, the lady called and said she couldn't come so Petunia took over Ginger's responsilibilities. She even
dressed like her. She did very well but got anty for her mud bath after a while. When Ginger got back, she already knew all about it and they had a mud bath together.

Response: I really enjoyed this book. I think younger elementary students would love this story. It's an animal fantasy story because no pig can really dress up like a human and do everything
we can. Pigs also can't walk on two hoofs like humans can. Children would love hearing a story about a walking pig that knows what humans say. The illustrations are also wonderful. It looks
like she drew the pictures and colored it in with colored pencils. The book says that the pictures are rendered in pencils and markers. Many children have pets so they could identify with Ginger's fondness of her pet pig. I really like the picture of Petunia driving Ginger's sports car. Children will think this is so funny. It's amazing how much Ginger and Petunia look alike with the same outfits on. I wanted to read one of Polacco's works because during the author
study on her, they said that her books had closed endings and I like to know how everything ended. I think pictures of Polacco look like one of the Cosby kids on The
Cosby Show.

Teaching Ideas: Children would love to just hear this book. They might write
a story about what their pet might do if they left. You might also bring in
dress-up clothes for the children to dress up in and act out parts of the story.