Granny Gomez & Jigsaw

By: Deborah Underwood
Illustrated by: Scott Magoon
Publisher: Disney Hyperion
Publication Date: March 2010
ISBN: 978-0786852161
Reviewed by: Deb Fowler
Review Date: April 2010

Granny Gomez lived in a great big old yellow house. It had a wrap around porch, a turret, an attached green house, and all kinds of interesting things inside. It had a set of drums, rows of red tulips along the windows, mountain climbing equipment, and best of all a ton of jigsaw puzzles. Even so, there was something missing from Granny's life. She thought about getting a pet, but couldn't decide what kind she wanted. A dog? Hmmmm. A cat? Hmmmm. When her friend William showed up, he said, "Cats and dogs are nice, but they are not very special." Well, there isn't anything more special than cats `n dogs, so what on Earth was he thinking about? The next day there was a basket on the porch with, of all things, a baby in it.

It wasn't your regular kind of WAAAAAAH baby, it was a piggy baby. It had big daffy, googly eyes and Granny just wasn't going to have anything to do with it and carted him right back over to William's house. She gave him a piece of her mind saying, "Pigs belong in barns, not houses," and demanded he take that googly-eyed thing back. Well, that pig was going to end up as a slab of bacon and when Granny heard that she went straight back home and made friends with that piggy. Before long, Jigsaw and Granny ended up being best of pals, BUT what was going to happen when Jigsaw grew up? She was just going to have to build him a barn. Yep, a house was no place for a pig, even a special one like Jigsaw.

This heartwarming story of Granny and her special friend, Jigsaw the googly-eyed piggy, will bring a smile to your face. As soon as Jigsaw lands on that porch the reader will almost intuitively know that Granny and Jigsaw are going to fall in love with one another. This rascally pig is a charmer and his relationship with Granny is charmingly hysterical. I loved the little scenes like seeing an over-sized pig bottom sticking out of the cupboards.

Quill says: This is the type of story that anyone who has fallen in love with anything from a gerbil to a googly-eyed piggy is going to LOVE!