Farmyard Friends: Portly Pig

Portly Pig is worried about being too clean. The grass is too pristine and the flowers and trees are altogether too neat, so he goes along the track to find somewhere muckier - as befitting a pig that loves muddy pools. Yet when Portly finds a nice muddy puddle to roll in, grey clouds appear and Portly gets washed clean again. What’s a pig to do?

A perfect early story in board book format, Portly Pig is a joyful addition to Axel Scheffler’s Farmyard Friends series, all of which provide a simple rhyming story about familiar animals over six double page spreads. Scheffler’s familiar illustration style is reliably expressive, humorous and adorable, appealing to young readers straightaway. Nice thick pages mean that older babies can chew and bend away to their heart’s content and still have a solid book to show for it afterwards for story time.