The Christmas Pig

 

 

Dear Readers,

    I have mixed feelings about The Christmas Pig By J.K Rowling. In this book, Jack, the main character, loses the most important thing he owns, his beloved stuffed pig named Dur Pig or DP for short. The Christmas Pig or CP for short acts as a replacement, but it doesn’t work very well, at least not until the day of miracles and lost causes, Christmas Eve. On that night most things are able to move around and talk. CP decides to put his trust in Jack and takes him to the land of the lost to find DP.

   This book talks about divorce and losing things that are special to you. It also in chapter 17 shows what happens to unwanted things, so even though this book doesn’t seem like it, I would say this is for 9 and up. It also isn’t very realistic, aside from the whole inanimate objects having souls and the land of the lost.  Rowling also doesn’t do the greatest job with this age rating because from the front and title, it seems like a pretty wholesome book, right? No, in the third chapter, his parents are divorced, in the 18th they show no care for the blue bunny and boot him into the wastes and in the 24th, they blackmail someone. After they get to disposable (the first town) it also gets fairly repetitive, they say oh, DP is going to be here, then they look around,  say/do something stupid, go to the next area, repeat. It also doesn’t make too much sense that they would run into the blue bunny again, seeing how much stuff we lose each day.

   The theme of this book is one of its redeeming factors, which is that even if someone is broken or dirty, it doesn't mean that they don’t deserve love. You can see an example of this in pages 170-172, and in this part of the book, they are trying to go to the city of the missed (the third town) and the blue bunny, who is dirty and unwanted, gets found. “Mum! I’ve found a bunny! A blue bunny in the flower bed… It must have been here for ages; it’s all covered in mud… Please Mum, Please let me keep him!” This is one of the many times that Rowling expresses this theme, but this one is the most important, because in the beginning they acted like the blue bunny was inhuman, just because he was dirtier, but that didn’t change the fact that the girl pleaded with her mom to keep the bunny.

   In conclusion, this book was not great, and I wouldn’t have read it if I didn’t see Rowling had written it. I also wouldn’t associate Rowling's new books with being bad, because The Ickabog, also written by Rowling, is one of my favorite books. This story isn’t balanced well, with the cute cover and kiddo friendly seeming story (overall) and the divorce and mistreatment and harassment of the dirtier/ unimportant characters. 

 

My rating is 3 pigs out of 5.

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Thanks for reading!

Ian Reynolds