The Best Place & Hog-Eye: Two Stories by Susan Meddaugh

Iconographic adaptations of author/illustrator Susan Meddaugh's pen and watercolor picture books The Best Place (1999) and Hog-Eye (1995) are compiled in this program aimed at “ages 6-9” (although better suited for the lower end of that range). In The Best Place, a wolf who is troubled by a friend's suggestion that his house (with a lovely screen porch) might not be “the best place in the world,” decides to sell and trade up, embarking on a lengthy quest (battling river mosquitoes, sweltering desert heat, and soaking London rain) to find a new domicile—only to eventually discover that there's no place like home. Unfortunately, the rabbit family tenants aren't so keen to sell the property back…. In Hog-Eye, a piglet who skips school relates a fanciful fable to her family about a wrong bus, a wayward path, and a hungry, illiterate wolf whom the little porker misleads by purporting to read “recipe” instructions that actually serve as the basis for an escape plan. A solid pair of parable-like tales, peppered with humor, DVD extras here include “A Conversation with the Author” featurette. Recommended. Aud: K, E, P. (J. Williams-Wood)