Golden Pig

Golden Pig is one of the titles in Snowflake Books' series: Animal Signs. Adapted from ancient Chinese legends, all based around the mythical Race of the Animals, these stories are well-known and loved by all Chinese children; the books thus provide an informal and accessible means of introducing Western children to an important aspect of Chinese life and culture in the home, and of introducing diversity studies into education. Each book tells the story of one of the animals of the Chinese Zodiac signs, which are also used as the names of the years in the Chinese calendar. Golden Pig has a golden skin, though all her brothers and sisters are pink. This is because a magic golden light shone from the sky just as she was born. Golden Pig is very greedy and eats everyone's food as well as her own; Mother Pig is very angry and Golden Pig runs away from home, but she eats all the food in the village too. All the pigs decide they must grow more food. They dig up the earth with their noses. The farmers are very pleased. They say, 'Emperor Shun had elephants to plow his fields. But we have pigs.' They grow lots of food.One day Golden Pig is digging for food as usual when she discovers some valuable rock salt. This makes everyone very rich and happy. Golden Pig is persuaded to enter for the Jade Emperors Race of Animals, but as usual she stops to eat fallen fruit and anything she sees. At last, as everyone shouts encouragement, she jumps and rolls over the finish just in twelfth place, so the twelfth and last Chinese Year is the Year of Pig.As with all Chinese traditional animal stories, their deceptive simplicity is a vehicle for displaying the richness and variety of human character and feeling; Chinese believe the animal year of a person's birth influences character; the animals in these legends display to some extent their respective zodiac qualities. Golden Pig is at first disliked because she seems self-centred, but she is good natured, and in her own disorganised way she brings a lot of good to everyone, so she is popular in the end.This is an entirely new version of the old legend, re-written in simple English, suitable for reading to or by young children, or by older children learning Mandarin. The complete text is bi-lingual with colour coded key words and a Mandarin-English vocabulary.The parallel text in Pinyin, using the Roman alphabet, enables readers to pronounce the Chinese characters. Purchase of the book allows access to an animated e-book with audio in English and/or Chinese.Production quality is high, with good quality paper and colour, original full colour illustrations by Chinese artists on every page, and traditional binding.