The Princess and the Pig — UK Paperback

Out last year in hardback, my second picture book with illustrator Poly Bernatene, The Princess and the Pig, has just come out in a UK paperback edition published by Macmillan Children’s Books. 

It's the story of a princess and a piglet who are accidentally switched at birth and brought up in each others places. The characters in the story try to make sense of the situation by referring to fairy tales in which similar things happen.  So the king, having just read Sleeping Beauty, assumes that his daughter has been turned into a pig by a bad fairy in revenge for not being invited to the princess's christening.

When I was writing the story I was torn between giving it the conventional fairytale ending, favoured by my then four-year-old daughter, and a more surprising and slightly subversive ending, which I thought was funnier. In the end I plumped for the latter and fortunately many readers and reviewers seem to share my tastes.

Here are a couple of the books reviews

"All the ingredients of a sure-fire winner ... The pictures are beautiful, bold; the story is very funny ... What’s not to like?"

Yvonne Coppard, CAROUSEL

"Emmett and Bernatene have concocted a pretty much perfect fractured fairy tale, with wry, Thurberesque prose and gorgeously funny digital drawings that both embrace and wink at the genre."

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY - Starred Review

The hardcover edition recently won the Hillingdon Picture Book of the Year Award in the UK and was shortlisted for last year’s CYBILS Awards in the US.  The book is currently shortlisted for three other US awards: the Maryland Black-Eyed Susan Book Award, the Washington Children's Choice Picture Book Award and - as I've only just discovered - the North Carolina Children's Book Award.

Here’s the trailer I made for the book in which I look extremely regal and distinguished, in a porcine sort of way - and not at all foolish.

And here’s one of the spreads.

As usual, you can find out more about the book’s creation by reading my author’s note on the book’s page on my main web site.

As well as the new UK paperback edition published by Macmillan, the book is available in a US hardcover edition published by Walker Books.


And, before I go, here’s a sneak peek of the next book Poly and I have done together. It’s called Here Be Monsters and is a swashbuckling tale of dastardly pirates and mischievous monsters. Macmillan have taken the book to the Frankfurt Book Fair this week and it should be published around this time next year. Here's a detail from one of Poly’s magnificently misty illustrations.