3.5 stars.

As most people, I saw the film of this book growing up. I discovered that it was a novel some years after, and finally this year I got to read it (for one of my courses at Uni). I’ve never been much of a fun of animal stories (save The Lion King and maybe Bambie), but I liked this one.

We all know this one: a pig comes to live at a farm (where they plan to have it as the main course in the Christmas dinner), he gets “adopted” by the sheep-dog and he ends up learning how to heard sheep and it’s awesome at it.

The fun thing about this book is that Babe doesn’t win because he’s the fiercest or the physically strongest. He wins because he is nice and respects everybody equally. His adoptive mother, Fly, is very dismissive of the sheep under her care. For her, the sheep are stupid and have to be shouted at and bullied.

But Babe is not one to accept this blindly. Instead of following what his mother thinks is the right way to handle sheep, he comes up with what he thinks is the better way to do so: he talks to them nicely

And of course, it works way much better than anything Fly did before. And even she gets round to do it eventually. I liked those scenes a lot, with Fly fighting with herself to go against her nature and act nicely towards them. Especially when it was for Babe’s sake. It was sweet of her, who was pretty much the opposite of sweet in her general interactions with… well, basically everybody.

Babe shows that the traditional idea of strength and power we’re used to read are not precisely what ends up winning battles. He is polite and kind to everyone, and thus everybody warms up to him. Even the farmers who had planned to eat him ended up loving him as much as the other animals. There’s a great moment in which a pack of wolves attack the flock, and Babes defends them fiercely. I felt it was a brilliant way to show his growth: from being a scared and insecure piggy, he becomes a strong sheep pig, that can drive away wolves.

Well done, pig.



Babe’s relation with the farmer was pretty enough. I liked the way in which he warmed up to the pig. While he didn’t want to have much to do with Babe at first, he ended up respecting and caring for him. Babe was so much more than just a pig, he was the one that united the farm and so on.

I enjoyed this book as if I was a little kid again. Though my favorite pig story will always be Charlotte’s Web, Babe was very nice. Even if it’s easy to say that the values that are held in the story are very traditional, I believe they are still relevant. At least, you can still attract more flies with honey than with vinegar. So… yay for Babe!