Guinea Pigs Add Up

PreS-Gr 1—A cheerful classroom of primary-grade students is delighted when their teacher announces the imminent arrival of a class pet. Soon a guinea pig takes up residence, but the children sense its loneliness and beg for a guinea-pig playmate. She arrives, "and two weeks later in the cage,/one pig gives birth to three." Very quickly there are 20 pets, and, as they threaten to overrun the classroom, Mr. Gilbert scrambles to find them homes with the children's families. The class wall charts illustrating the math involved in the furry family's growth now cover subtraction as the creatures are successfully farmed out. Mr. Gilbert's class-pet replacement—"a rabbit sweet as honey"—is happily welcomed, until "he" turns out to be an expectant she. A lively, rhyming text engagingly relates the story of these multiplying creatures, while the watercolor, pen-and-ink, and acrylic-gouache illustrations comically depict the mayhem resulting from overpopulation. Sweetly humorous touches abound in the illustrative details and extend the story line. This rhythmic tale of ever-popular pets will work well as a read-aloud or with newly independent readers.—Kathleen Finn, St. Francis Xavier School, Winooski, VT