The Pig War: How a Porcine Tragedy Taught England and America to Share [Hardcover]

Here is a true story of how the great nations of America and England almost went to war in 1859 over a pig—but learned to share instead.

In 1859, the British and Americans coexist on the small island of San Juan, located off the coast of the Pacific Northwest. They are on fairly good terms--until one fateful morning when an innocent hog owned by a British man has the misfortune to eat some potatoes on an American farmer's land. In a moment of rash anger, Lyman Cutlar shoots Charles Griffin's pig, inadvertently almost bringing the two nations to war. Tensions flare, armies gather, cannons are rolled out . . . all because of a pig! Emma Bland Smith's humorous text and Alison Jay's folksy illustrations combine in this whimsical nonfiction picture book that models the principles of peaceful conflict resolution.A Bank Street College of Education Best Book of the Year
NCSS/CBC Notable Social Studies Trade Book
Winner of the Washington Library Association Towner Award

★ Two wars have been fought with England on American soil, and now in 1859, on the Northwest Coast island of San Juan, war number three is about to erupt [over a pig]. Smith deftly captures the retrospective absurdity of this historical incident with deadpan narration that will have young audiences slapping their foreheads in mock dismay over the childish behavior of hotheaded adults. Jay adds absurdity of her own in her visual parody of nineteenth-century art—portly, self-important men straining at their buttons, rendered in the dusty hues and crackled surfaces of naïve folk art and portraiture. —The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, starred review

★ Jay’s crackled, primitivist illustrations of cannons and distant figures in antique dress and uniforms add a prlCC