Mrs. Piggle Wiggle Book Review

TW: Spanking as a punishment (including threats), Racial Stereotypes, Eating Disorders

I read the first book of the classic middle grade series Mrs. Piggle Wiggle by Betty MacDonald during these last few days. It's a short, quick, simple little book. There are only eight chapters.

Mrs. Piggle Wiggle is an eccentric and friendly woman who likes kids. She invites the kids in her neighborhood for tea parties and just to play. Not only do the kids like her, but their parents do, too. That's because she seems to understand how kids are and gives them unique "cures" to their bad behavior when the parents don't know how to deal with them when they act naughty. 

Except for the first chapter where we are introduced to Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, every chapter is strictly formulaic: some kid is misbehaving, the parents phone Mrs. Piggle Wiggle on their problem, then Mrs. Piggle Wiggle gives them advice or objects that will get the kid to realize their bad behavior, and by the last page of the chapter the kid realizes their mistake and starts behaving themselves. 

For example, in Chapter 3, we follow a little girl named Mary who has a problem of talking back to her parents. Mrs. Piggle Wiggle remedies this by giving her family a pet parrot, and the parrot only repeats what Mary says. Eventually Mary realizes how annoying and rude it is to talk back to people, so she stops.

I mostly enjoyed the book, but I did have a few problems with it. That is why I gave it 3.5 out of 5 stars. This book is very much a product of it's time (published in the 1950s), so a lot of things haven't aged well. I already knew that piece of information going into the book, but it's important that I address the problematic things if you plan on reading this book, or reading it to your kids if you are a teacher or parent. I also do not condone any of the problematic aspects of this book in real life.

The problematic things are: 

• Some of the kids dress up as Hollywood Natives in one chapter while playing (aka racial stereotypes).
• A lot of the parents threaten to spank their kids when they misbehave, and some of them actually do.
• There is one chapter where the kid is a boy who barely eats. The story tries to pass this off as he is being a naughty boy who just doesn't want to eat his food, but his punishment to get him to eat is giving him the least amount of food possible. This genuinely sounded more like an eating disorder while I was reading it, and I'm really disturbed it's not taken seriously. Eating disorders in fiction are a trigger for me. 

So do I recommend this book? I'm not really sure, to be honest. In my rating system, anything that gets a rating in the 2.5 to 3.5 stars range is a book that I'm not sure whether or not I liked it. Due to that, I can't be certain I can recommend it to other people. I guess if your curious and want to check out the book for yourself, go ahead! All I know is, I highly likely won't be reading the rest of the books in this series. 

Do you like any classic middle grade novels?