Mrs. Piggle Wiggle
by Betty MacDonald
Report by Jonathan Hinrichs

Who was Mrs. Piggle Wiggle? Mrs. Piggle Wiggle was someone whom everybody liked. She was different from everybody. Like she had a house that was built upside down. Also, she always had holes in her back yard because all the boys were trying to find the lost treasure that her husband had buried. She always had flowers in her front yard. People were always pretending they had a campfire on the floor in the house, because her living room had a really long chandelier. Everybody would pretend like they were cowboys or Indians when they were at her house. She could do stuff for kids to help them listen to their parents.
One time she helped a little boy eat more. She did this by letting the boy have really little amounts of food. The boy grew very weak. So he listened to his mom and ate the amount of food he was told.
Another time there was a girl who never wanted to take a bath. One morning her mother told her take a bath and she screamed at the top of her lungs “I don’t want to”. Finally she grew so dirty that she went out to get the mail and the mailman screamed because she was so dirty and she didn’t have her hair brushed. Then one morning she went into eat breakfast and said “Addy, ould you ggget a ink of ater, ease?” (That says, “Daddy, could you get a drink of water please?) Her mom and dad never let people see her because she was so dirty.
Finally one morning she had radishes growing out of her. She said to her mom and dad, “Ould I ake a bath?” She said it so clearly that it broke some of the dirt on her cheek. She never, ever wanted to be dirty again.
There were other cures like the fighter-quallers cure, and the never-want-to-go-to-bedders cure, the selfishness cure, and the won’t pick upper toys cure, and the answer-backer cure. Mrs. Piggle Wiggle always knew what to do to help children do the right thing.