Alice is the middle child in the Singer family. Her older brother, Oliver, is smart and annoyingly smug about it, at least as far as Alice is concerned. Her younger sister, Rosie, is a force to be reckoned with—she’s terrorized the children at almost every preschool in town. Alice herself has only one small quirk: she’s never been able to say the word “animal.” It always comes out “aminal.” A school field trip to a farm should be her undoing, but Alice knows how to talk her way around the problem. What is her undoing is the little pig with the lame leg she meets that day. She falls head over heels, and when her birthday comes around, it’s the only thing she wants. Even when her parents make it perfectly clear they don’t think a pig is a good idea, she doesn’t give up hope. Tim Kennemore’s chapter book features an unusually entertaining family and a surprisingly satisfying twist that draws the story to a close. (Ages 6–9)

Alice fetched the three-legged pig and plopped it down in the middle of the food, where it snorted and grunted and gobbled, collapsed on its back and wiggled its legs at Alice as if it hadn't even noticed that she'd gi ven the food to the turkey first. Alice sighed. What a forgiving pig. A generous pig!
'I wish I could take you home with me, ' she said sadl y, and for a moment she could have sworn she saw the pig wink. Alice's s older brother is good at everything, and he teases her mercilessly about her difficulty in pronouncing words. Her baby sister is a toddling tornado who gets into everything. In-the-middle Alice wants to learn to speak properly so Oliver will stop teasing her. She also wishes for a real pig for her eighth birthday, something of her very own. When her birthday finally ar rives, Alice receives more than she could have wished for