Pearls Before Swine

review by

Tony Nappa

Thirteen-year-old Tony Nappa gives you the 411 on a family-friendly cartoon book and an action-packed sports video game! 

PEARLS BEFORE SWINE by Stephan Pastis (Andrews McMeel Publishing) 

This is a funny book that is somewhat like the Dilbert comic strip in its humor. PEARLS BEFORE SWINE: BLTs TASTE SO DARN GOOD is about a pig named "Pig" and a rat named, um, "Rat." 

Rat and Pig have some friends. One of them is Zebra who’s always looking for ways to stop his herd from getting eaten by the lions (the big bullies). Rat and Pig have some funny adventures. Rat is always trying to get rich. Pig is not very smart and is always watching TV and getting fat. And he often makes "imaginary friends" out of food items. Rat on the other hand is very smart and is trying to get rid of Pig. And get rich.

Here are three things I liked about this book. I enjoyed the off-the-wall humor the cartoonist used in this book, and thought it was funny how Pig really liked pork and everyone thought that he was a traitor for it. I also laughed at Pig’s “fruit buddies” group which was where him and fruits would get together and talk but Rat was always eating the “fruit buddies.” And it was funny whenever that they went to a Chinese restaurant, Rat would get a good fortune like “fortune will smile her sweet smile on you” and pig would get bad ones like “fortune will spit in your eye, you dumb pig." 

Although there is no real spiritual content in this cartoon book, it still talked about many things parents and kids should be talking about too---things like bullies, friendship, peer pressure and more. Plus, it was just funny. Kids (and their parents) who like to read Dilbert in the comics pages will most likely like Pearls Before Swine: BLTs Taste So Darn Good too.

I would recommend this book to a parent for their child because it has good topics in it like bullies and it is just plain good.

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Tony Nappa is a seventh-grader who has authored three books: Lunch Box Laughs; Lunch Box Trivia; and Lunch Box Promises