Starred Review ALA Booklist (Tue Mar 01 00:00:00 CST 2005)

Starred Review Rosoff, winner of the 2005 Michael L. Printz Award for her YA novel How I Live Now (see The Booklist Interview , p.1289), does a 180 in this picture book about dirty, stinky, mean boars. Yet there is a thread between the two books. Both are bitingly funny and deeply satisfying--each on its own level, of course. Morris, Boris, Horace, and Doris don't like others, and don't want others to like them. Consequently, being polite to Boris results in a tusk in the butt. If you try to help Horace with his mittens, he'll make a nasty smell and snort with laughter. Doris may be the worst case, though--the stinkiest, ugliest, bossiest boar of all. If the boars say they'll be nice when they visit your home, don't believe them. They'll do everything from soaking in your toilet to cutting the string off your puppets. Doris will eat your stuffed animals. So, everyone agrees that there is no such thing as a nice wild boar, but--as the final picture shows--you may run into one that is sweet ("though chances are that you won't"), and then you will be amazed. Blackall's roll-on-the-ground-in-laughter illustrations are incisively rendered in ink and gouache. There's not a bad habit, predilection, or odor that isn't described or drawn, and the boars' sly reactions to the havoc they cause are priceless. Let's hope for more from this disgustingly delightful group. Wild, they may be. Bores, they are not.

Horn Book (Mon Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 2005)

The narrator introduces the reader to four wild boars who have atrocious manners. Although the text is lively, with a tart, direct address, and the illustrations are child-appealing, with lots of bathroom humor, the point of the book is obscure. If the wild boars are younger siblings, as hinted in the penultimate spread, the explanation will come too late for most readers.

Kirkus Reviews

Poster piggies for bad behavior, Boris, Morris, Horace and Doris rampage through this cautionary introduction: "They are dirty and smelly, bad-tempered and rude. Do you like them? Never mind. They do not like you either,"—as they proceed to demonstrate with a series of young humans who try to make friendly overtures. Blackall depicts a quartet of long-nosed porkers, on all fours but in human dress, gleefully smashing offered toys and snacks while leaving messes, both mentionable and un- , in school and domestic settings. Breaking occasionally into rhyme, Rosoff details the havoc, then closes with a warning that, even when newborn and cute, boars will be boars. Shelve this next to Nicole Rubel's Grody's Not So Golden Rules (2003) and like contrarian essays; young readers will be delighted to meet this fearsome foursome, and inspired to look around for their real-life counterparts. (Picture book. 6-8)

School Library Journal

K-Gr 3-In this silly cautionary tale, Rosoff presents the catastrophic results of friendships with wild boars that are "dirty and smelly, bad-tempered and rude." Horace will "cut the strings off your puppets" and "make fun of your feet," Morris shares his fleas, Boris leaves a smelly trail of destruction, and Doris is "uglier than an Ugli fruit." Like cunning children without manners, these creatures lack the ability to say "excuse me" or "please"; they break toys, stomp on treats, soak in the toilet, and devour treasures. It's clear they can not be trusted. The wily quartet appears dressed for play in cartoon displays of their unmannered excesses. Large, gouache illustrations follow the snort, stomp, and smell of the boars viewed either from a safe vantage point or eyeball to eyeball. The artist's attention to detail underscores the tiniest hairs and the grimiest clothes, down to the minute bow on Doris's head. The animals' eyes reveal their true deceitful nature in encounters with trusting children. An entertaining choice for independent reading or group sharing.-Mary Elam, Forman Elementary School, Plano, TX Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.