Ginger and Petunia
By: Patricia Polacco
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Grade: K-5
Have you ever had that pet that meant the world to you? That you would absolutely do anything for in a heart beat. You thought of them one of your best friends, you told them everything even though they cant talk back. You know they are listening and care for you and keep you company when no one else will. This is a wonderful book about a lady named Ginger and her pet Petunia the pig, who is her right hand women, always there for her. You get to see Ginger interact with Petunia very differently than you normally see a person interacting with a pig.
The story is about a lady named Ginger, who an elderly lady very accomplished pianist and very socially active but she devotes most of her time to her pet pig. When Ginger goes out of town for business, you see Petunia go and play dress up with Ginger dresses and walk around like she was a real person. She felt as if she wasn’t a pig anymore and was just a friend to Ginger. Petunia practiced all of the poses that she has seen Ginger do millions of time with no effort at all. It just shows you that you can wear anything you want to wear as long as you can pull it off. 
This story is realistic fiction, because people can have pet pigs be their best friends, you can have anyone that will keep you company so your not alone. Not saying that your pet pig will live in your house like gingers did, but if you have a farm it can be your pet while it sleeps outside in its own house. Many people do try to dress up their pets into clothes so that they can look fancy just like humans do.  Ginger as the character is so real and believable that you can really picture this elderly lady living all by herself and having a pig as her pet to keep her company and that she adores and does everything for. The whole story line keeps the children involved because you don’t really know what the pig is going to do at first when Ginger has to leave so quickly to go to an appearance.
You can use this story for a couple different lessons, because you can talk to the students about if they have any pets and if they have any attachments to anyone in their families or even to themselves. You can also have them pick an animal that they would want to have as a pet like Ginger did and have them draw a picture of them and the animal they chose. Just to get their minds thinking about which animal would they really want to keep them company where there lonely or scared like Ginger has Petunia. While reading the story you can stop and ask the students what they think is going to happen next to get their brains thinking and just not totally relaxing while they are getting a story read to them. Keep them involved so that you keep everyone’s attention throughout the whole story. As teachers you can use this book for different grade levels, because they will all think of something completely different about what is going to happen and what they thought about the story. You’ll see as a teacher how many different ideas you get from reading the story to your class.
8.14 Make judgments about setting, characters and events and support them with evidence from the text.