The Sheep-Pig
core novel 1983 The Sheep-Pig
Record
| First published | 1983 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.10 (16,657 ratings, collected 2026-10-05) |
| Page count | 118 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780575033757 |
| Internal chronology | 1 |
Synopsis
When Farmer Hogget guesses a piglet's weight at the village fair, he wins the animal and brings it home to his sheep farm, where his wife has plans to fatten it for Christmas dinner. The piglet, Babe, is adopted by Fly, the farm's kind-hearted sheepdog, who raises him with her own puppies and teaches him all she knows. Babe knows he can never be a sheepdog, but he learns to round up sheep in his own way: instead of the sheepdogs' snapping and bullying, he speaks to the sheep politely, and they do as he asks. When Farmer Hogget, on a whim, lets the pig try his hand with the flock, and later when Babe saves the sheep from rustlers and from dogs, the farmer begins to see what he has. The story ends at the county sheepdog trials, with a pig in the ring and three words that have become proverbial.
Where it sits
- Universe: The Sheep-Pig
- Series: Babe core; position 1 of 2 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Dick King-Smith
Awards (verified)
- Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, 1984: won
Notes
- From the series record (Babe): Dick King-Smith's 'farmyard fantasy' of Farmer Hogget's talking farm: Babe, the orphaned piglet who learns to herd sheep with courtesy, and his great-grandson Ace, who understands human speech. The first was filmed as Babe (1995).
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings, but they resolve to the exact same sequence for this book, so one combined line is shown instead of two identical ones.
- Reading order, within the series Babe: position 1 of 2: next Ace: The Very Important Pig (1990)
Sources
← The Sheep-Pig dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.