After conveying the ascetic values of Henry David Thoreau for the picture book crowd in Henry Hikes to Fitchburg and its sequels, Johnson here lightheartedly examines the political themes in George Orwell's Animal Farm for youngest readers. On "a tumbledown farm where only animals lived," Farmer Orvie, a pig clad in overalls, cap and boots, tips back in a chair, ostensibly to keep the lean-to buildings standing ("I'm holding up the barn all by myself," says he). Comic details show the letters "The Manor Farm" transformed into "No Man Farm," and the graffiti-like motto (which acts as Orvie's refrain), "4 legs bad, 2 legs good," painted on the side of the dilapidated barn. But when Orvie claims he cannot budge from his chair and, in a circle of panel illustrations, barks orders to Duck, Cow, Goat and Donkey to shine his boots and bring him slops to eat, they bristle. "That farmer is a lazy pig!" Cow observes. So Duck approaches the porcine fellow, "I have 2 legs, Orvie," says she. "Can I be the farmer now?" Orvie replies, "You have to do big work to wear the farmer boots." So Duck fights back.In the first of only two full-bleed spreads, Duck steals away from the swirling swimming hole back to the barn, against a midnight-blue backdrop and the "chug-a-lug, glug-glug sound" of the draining pond. The other critters soon identify the culprit (she wears the pond's drain around her neck) and give chase. Johnson's signature cubist style works to great effect in a series of panel illustrations that heighten the perspective and quicken the pacing. As the creatures pursue Duck through a pond that has devolved into a mud hole, guess who is the only one to get stuck? A triumphant spread shows the teamwork involved in freeing a now naked and humbled pig. "Hooray! 18 legs best!" exclaims Duck, as equanimity is restored to No Man Farm. This book can stand proudly alongside Johnson's Henry books. Hooray indeed.--Jennifer M. Brown