Here’s a hint:

Who can resist a pig named Mercy? She loves food, lots of it, and adores buttered toast.

Constantly embroiled in some sort of unassuming mischief, Mercy invariably provokes her next door neighbors Baby and Eugenia to action.  In book 5, Mercy annoys Eugenia – of the blue hair and elongated, caricatured face – to distraction.  Bottom line?  Eugenia is on the warpath: “I have had it… I am ready to take extreme measures.”

While timid younger sister Baby stands by, Eugenia rings Animal Control: “I am kissing that pig good-bye.”

It may just be me, but Mercy and the Lincoln sisters, Eugenia and Baby, come into their own in this book.  Chris Van Dusen has outdone himself.  Mercy’s look of pure joy when she tastes Eugenia’s delicious pansies amplifies the text in a way that I haven’t been aware of in previous books. And poor Eugenia – her bony, green garden-gloved hands speak volumes as she runs her finger down the page of the phone book, in search of the all important Animal Control number.

It goes without saying, that Candlewick has done an amazing job of designing the Mercy Watson collection.  The trim size and “classic collector” binding (surely there’s a more “correct” term for this kind of binding) makes me feel a certain joy in owning these books.  Books I know I will be proud to pass along to my children’s children.

** Look for the latest addition to the Mercy Watson collection in July 2009: Mercy Watson: Something Wonky This Way Comes.