The rhyming tale of escalating porcine anarchy is one that has been all but perfected by American author-illustrator David McPhail in books like Pigs Aplenty, Pigs Galore!, and Pigs Ahoy! Thus it is hard not to think of McPhail when reading this collaboration between Linda Bailey and Josée Masse (their first), in which pigs, in ever-increasing numbers, wreak havoc on a little one’s bedtime.

Pig number one, a girl pig in a nightshirt covered in stars, is all ready to sleep when in comes pig number two, carrying a plate full of buttered toast and a book that she intends to read “all through the night.” (The book is “The Merry Sows of Windsor,” just one of many non-sequiturial visual references to Shakespeare that occur throughout the book.) Pig number two is followed by pigs three, four, five – all the way up to 10. Each pig brings a unique form of chaos to the proceedings. (“Four was a boar who juggled with plums/ Five came to bed with a full set of drums.”) Pig number one finally pleads with the others, tearfully, to let her sleep. Contrite, they file out, one by one, and order is restored.

Bailey sets most of the story in breezy rhyming couplets. Masse’s acrylic illustrations are rendered in autumnal colours and made to look as if they’re painted on wood, giving the whole book a more refined feel than the action of the story suggests. This is a well-done go-to-sleep book, even if, at the height of the pigs’ antics, the temptation to throw in a “pigs aplenty, pigs galore!” is difficult to resist.