By Kate DiCamillo
Six little chapter books in one box, all about Mercy: a pig who lives indoors, loves the Watsons, and loves hot buttered toast even more.
Mercy is a pig, but the Watsons treat her like a daughter. She sleeps in their bed, rides shotgun in the car, and will do just about anything for a slice of hot buttered toast. Over these six books she sets out to help and gets it wonderfully wrong: she 'rescues' the Watsons by accident, sends a car rolling down the street, and turns a quick errand for toast ingredients into a scene with police cars and a fire truck. The grumpy neighbor two doors down is not amused. Everyone else is.
These are real chapter books, with an actual plot and a spine, but Chris Van Dusen's big glossy pictures fill nearly every other page and something funny happens every few lines, so the jump never feels like a jump. A child who's been finishing early readers gets to hold something that looks grown-up and find out they can read it. And because it's the whole set, the next book is already sitting in the box the minute they close the last one. Mine went through all six in about a week.