It's the yearly hootenanny for piggies all across the holler. They're hankerin' for a porky polka rhythm--plus a piggy rigadoon, a piggy roundelay, and, of course, a piggy mosh pit!Energetic illustrations and rhythmic rhymes introduce musical styles and instruments to the youngest readers, and the charming cast of piggies is simply irresistible. This bouncing barn dance is the place to be--so grab your piggy partner and join in! Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

It's time for the annual holler hootenanny, and these little piggies know how to party. "The drummer piggy hits a groove,/ he keeps the polka beat./ It's a hoopy-shoopy rhythm/ and the pigs all stomp their feet," writes Appelt (Oh My Baby, Little One). The star of the barn dance is Porcina, a Rubenesque chanteuse whose high notes make "all the bachelor piggies sigh." But the real show is in Pham's (Before I Was Your Mother) suedelike, digital illustrations. She crowds the barn floor with ecstatic couples-and an occasional singleton-carried away by the music and merrymaking (in one scene, a pig can be spotted floating in the punch bowl; throughout, a duck quacks with abandon). Hues of rose and gold emanate from the footlights and lanterns, bouncing off the walls and illuminating the angular planes of the pigs' plump bodies. Investing her porcine participants with an individual personality, Pham makes the pages pulsate with the heady crush and buzz of a joint that's jumpin'. Ages 3-7. (Aug.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

K-Gr 2-The pigs in the holler are gathering for the annual hootenanny. The action of the story, told in rhyming quatrains, consists of the creatures cavorting to polkas, square dances, and the hokey "porky," and ending up in a piggy mosh pit. While there are some amusing touches and the verse scans reasonably well, there is nothing of substance here to maintain interest or inspire rereading. Pham's watercolor and colored-pencil digital-media art has decent design elements but suffers from an excess of pinks and reds. Bill Martin, Jr., and John Archambault's Barn Dance (Holt, 1995) is a better story of nighttime farm shenanigans.-Grace Oliff, Ann Blanche Smith School, Hillsdale, NJ Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.