From School Library Journal
Kindergarten-Grade 2–Peggy the pig needs something to wear to a party. She finds nothing that suits her in town, but on her way home she notices a scarecrow dressed in a wonderful outfit. So each night, she sneaks out to the cornfield and takes a different item, replacing it with one of her old garments. On the evening of the party–a dark and stormy night–she is decked out in her purloined finery when the scarecrow arrives and demands, Give me back my clothes! The plot is similar to that of The Teeny-Tiny Woman. The difference is that Peggy returns to the field, scares the duds off the scarecrow, and reclaims the ensemble. This easy reader is sprinkled with colorful cartoon illustrations that depict the action and support the text. However, the story strikes an odd note as it seems to indicate that stealing is okay and, supposedly, even funny. While Thiesing's other Silly Thrillers about this character were genuinely amusing and revolved around her naïveté, this one is not humorous or scary.
–Elaine Lesh Morgan, Multnomah County Library, Portland, OR Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Excitable Peggy returns for a fourth outing, squaring off against an animate scarecrow in this lively take on a familiar folktale motif. After much fruitless shopping, Peggy finds the perfect outfit for an upcoming party. That it happens to be adorning a scarecrow doesn't stop her from filching it, and sailing home to primp. That night, however, there are footsteps on her stairs, and a repeated demand: "Give me back my clothes!" A short power failure later, Peggy is left stripped to her bloomers. Fright changes to annoyance when Peggy hears the scarecrow laughing out in the field, which gives her the courage to turn the tables. Thiesing uses deep blues and intense hues to give the cartoon illustrations an eerie tone, but neither Peggy nor the scarecrow, whose long nose and straw-tufted extremities give it a lionlike look, will frighten children any more than they want to be frightened. A funny take on an old favorite.
John PetersCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
