Piggybook Sparknotes

Have you ever felt unappreciated or disrespected, like you're not important? The award-winning author Anthony Browne has written and illustrated Piggybook, which perfectly depicts a lesson about being grateful and empathising with others. Piggybook is not only entertaining, but also teaches the importance of gratitude and respect through detailed imagery and narrative. Piggybook starts off with a seemingly perfect family; it consists of Mr Piggott, his wife and their two polished young boys, Simon and Patrick. They live in a nice house with a nice garden and a nice car. However, constantly doing all the housework as well as working, Mrs Piggot is sick and tired of her role in the family. She is always being unappreciated by Mr Piggott, Simon and Patrick who depend on her to do all the housework. Fed up with their lazy behaviour, one day Mrs Piggot doesn't return home from work, leaving a note saying, "you are pigs". Without their mother to clean, cook and take care of them, the three boys progressively transform into pigs. Finally, being forced to do all the housework themselves, they eventually learn what it means to be grateful and respect everything Mrs Piggot had done. The style

At the very start of the book repetition is evident. Anthony Browne significantly changed the modality in his language. At the beginning of the story it said, "very important school", towards the end it said just "school". Both were used to describe Simon and Patrick's school. Therefore, the change in modality is showing how their school wasn't so important now that their mother had left. Another literary technique that Anthony Browne utilised was zoomorphism. This was used in the language Anthony Browne used to describe the family as pigs. For example, "snorted", "grunted" and "root" around. This was an excellent way to clearly show the family's transition from human to