The Adventures of Higgledy Piggledy • BOOK 2
Text Copyright © 2025 David J. Tomlinson
All rights reserved.
Art Copyright © 2025 Loyola Press
All rights reserved.
Cover and interior illustrations: Janna Mattia
Additional illustrations by Julia Huby
ISBN: 978-0-8294-5798-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2024952059
Published in Chicago, IL
Printed in China
25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 3 4 DC 10
There’s a magical place. And it’s real—not just a place in my imagination, although thinking about it does make it all the more magical.
This magical place is a beacon-white cottage with wonky, wooden shutters and house martins warbling in the eves, and a tadpole-teeming stream that sparkles sun-sleepily by the front door. This place is called Fieldside, and it’s where I lived as a child, and where I fished and climbed trees and rode a rickety, homemade bicycle.
My friends and I made up goofy games in a garden of spongy grass and a rainbow riot of
flowers; a garden in which we ran and laughed and hid under the woodsheds, behind the gooseberry bushes, and up in the beech trees; a garden glorious with bees, butterflies, and blazing bonfires on the weekends.
Just like Higgledy’s pond, the stream at Fieldside is wide enough to have fun jumping over and muddy enough to have fun falling into, but never deep enough to be dangerous.
Do you have a place like Fieldside? If you don’t, then I’m happy to share something with you— it’s possible to make one. To see how it’s done, all you need to do is join Higgledy and his friends on their adventures in Oinkers. In the end, it’s the people who make a place magical.
And if you have the kind of imagination that Higgledy has, you’ll carry your magical place with you forever, and when you’re all grown up, just
thinking about it will make you feel young again.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a beech tree to climb. Whoo-hoo!
David J. Tomlinson
•
Higgledy Piggledy, the colorful, caring pig, was in the middle of doing what he liked most—playing with his best friends, Harem Scarem, the happyhearted, fleet-footed hare, and Snowy, the laid-back, jet-black sheep.
Higgledy and his friends were good at playing. They practiced it a LOT. Higgledy liked to say that playing was something worth working at.
Harem Scarem’s favorite games were the ones where he could run first and think later—like leaping over hurdles or chasing a ball. Snowy’s favorite games were the ones where she could think first and not run at all—like checkers or tic-tac-toe. Higgledy’s
favorites were the ones that he made up himself and that combined thinking AND running as much or as little as you wanted. Still having plenty of fun, of course. This was the kind of game that Higgledy, Harem, and Snowy were playing right now. They called it Muddy-Ponding. Harem ran toward Higgledy’s shallow and muddy pond and jumped high. He flew through the air and landed safely on the other side, where he hopped and skipped and declared himself the winner. Higgledy ran toward the pond and jumped not quite so high. He flew through the air and landed right in the middle of the pond with a loud SPLAT, where he splashed and splattered and . . . declared himself the winner. Snowy did not run toward the pond. Delicately and slowly, she walked to the pond and set sail on a rubber ring, where she twirled and swirled and . . . declared herself the winner.
Having three winners of the game did not appear to cause the three friends any confusion. The same could not be said of the little, pink-cheeked piglet peeping through Higgledy’s garden fence, secretly watching Higgledy and his friends at play. The little, pink-cheeked piglet, known as Pinky to her friends, was struggling to understand the rules of Higgledy’s game.
Harem leaped over the pond again, this time doing a somersault halfway across. As Harem passed over Higgledy’s head, Higgledy shouted, “Dive! Dive! Dive!” and plunged beneath the water.
Snowy took out a telescope from deep inside her thick, woolly coat, put it to her eye, and shouted, “Land ahoy!”
The longer Pinky watched, the less clear the rules became, especially when Higgledy, Harem, and Snowy all shouted, “Winner!” at the same time.
Harem, who found it difficult to stop anything once he’d started, jumped over a watering can, a flower bed, and the garden gate. Pinky, thinking that a large, bouncing hare was about to bounce on her head, let out a loud squeal.
“Well, hello,” Higgledy said to Pinky in his usual friendly manner. “Would you like to join us in a game of Muddy-Ponding?”
To which Pinky let out another loud squeal. Higgledy and his friends looked at one another. Why was Pinky watching them? And what did Pinky find so alarming about playing a harmless game of Muddy-Ponding?
“It’s not hard,” Harem reassured Pinky. “All you have to do is jump over the muddy pond.”
“Or land in the middle of it,” Higgledy said.
“Or sail on top of it,” Snowy added.
“But . . . how can you all be winners?” Pinky asked, scratching her head.
“Having fun is the only rule,” Higgledy explained. “Everyone’s a winner if you have fun when you’re playing.”
The word fun had a strange effect on Pinky. She sighed loudly, as though remembering something that she missed very much. Pinky’s sad sigh caused Harem to remember something that he
missed very much—he hadn’t done any running or jumping for ages. At least, that’s how it seemed to Harem. He quickly did a backflip over the garden gate and felt much better.
“I’m afraid Mayor Crackling has banned all the piglets from having fun,” Pinky said with another sigh. “He says that it interferes with our schoolwork.”
“Mm . . .” Higgledy hummed thoughtfully.
“Well, schoolwork is important.”
“Very important,” Snowy said. “If I hadn’t gone to school, I wouldn’t know how to count sheep when I need to go to sleep at night.” Snowy began to demonstrate. “One sheep, two sheep, three shee—” Then she began to snore.
“And I wouldn’t have learned lots of different words to describe the movement of a speeding hare,” Harem said, running left and shouting, “Whoosh!” then running right and shouting, “Whizz!” then running left again and shouting, “Vroom!”
“Besides,” Higgledy added, “school helps you discover how to think things through for yourself. I could never have thought up Muddy-Ponding if I hadn’t gone to school.”
Pinky looked at the muddy pond and couldn’t help wondering exactly what it was about MuddyPonding that required any thinking up.
“Imagination,” Higgledy said, reading Pinky’s puzzled expression. “Imagination is very important. It’s what we need to solve problems and invent t hings.”
“Well, Mayor Crackling doesn’t like it,” Pinky said. “He says imagination makes too much noise. He sent me here to put this sign up.” Then Pinky did the strangest thing. She picked up a wooden sign that she’d carried up the hill and stuck it into the ground. The sign said, “NO
HIGGLEDY PIGGLEDIES IN OINKERS.”
Higgledy looked from the sign to Pinky to Harem and then to Snowy. What could that sign possibly mean?