l to r: Ryan Uytdewilligen (Credit: Mariana Aramburu) and Charlotte Cho (Credit: Maggie Chu).

The Tale of Pigling Bland, The Three Little Pigs, Babe: Pig in the City, the Olivia books, Charlotte’s Web: when it comes to stories featuring talking, performing, and travelling farm animals, pigs seem to be disproportionately represented. Try summoning a similar canon for sheep. Or cattle. Perhaps it’s pigs’ unique blend of relatability and, well, tastiness that explains their prominence. Either way, these stories often follow them on a hero’s journey or toward a life in showbiz, all in a bid to escape the ultimate threat – the butcher’s knife.

Ryan Uytdewilligen’s middle-grade chapter book, The Next Big Pigs, taps into that tradition while adding a smidge of Billy Elliot.

Ten-year-old Mikey Willigin lives on a remote farm with his parents. He’s spent years helping care for the animals, but now his parents think it’s time he raised pigs of his own, so they head to the local pig breeder – a malevolent type named Ken E. Baconmaker – and buy three.

Mikey, however, has no interest in farming. His ultimate dream is to perform – in movies, school plays, anything – but his parents continually dismiss or ignore him. He also bristles at the thought of his pigs ending up on someone’s plate.

Illustration: Charlotte Cho.

As luck would have it, his three pigs – Bianca, Humphrey, and Moo – share his performing ambitions. Not just that, but they can talk. And so, armed and united with a shared dream, the quartet sets out to conquer the bright lights of Broadway, with song-and-dance pit stops along the way to fund their journey, and with Ken E. Baconmaker – who’s gotten wind of the pigs’ unusual abilities and sees in them a money-making opportunity – hot on their curly tails.

Kids who share its characters’ love of silliness should delight in Uytdewilligen’s book. Its madcap plot offers endless swine-related humour, such as the moment Mikey smashes his piggy bank in front of his horrified new friends, or when Moo spies a slaughterhouse-bound pig trailer and excitedly describes it as “a limousine just for pigs.” (A running joke is that the pigs aren’t yet aware that people like to eat them.) When they finally get to New York, Humphrey, who knows his Shakespeare inside out, lands a role in – what else? – Hamlet.

In sending Mikey and his porcine collaborators toward the bright lights, Uytdewilligen (who was raised on an Alberta farm himself) has added another spirited chapter to the surprisingly durable tradition of pigs – and children – who refuse their prescribed fate.