Muddy Pig, Clean Pig
by ReadRead · 5 min readSplat! Penny jumps in the mud and splashes Dilly the duck. A farmyard story about saying sorry, helping a friend and bath day.
How would you like to read it?
Read it freeInside the book
Penny is a little pink pig who loves mud. Splat! She jumps in the big mud puddle, and she hides behind the hay when Farmer Lin says it is bath day. Then her mud lands on Dilly the duck, and Dilly cannot fly with muddy wings. Penny says sorry, picks up the brush, and finds out a bath is fun too.




The two new words
Covered in wet, sticky brown mud. It comes up 8 times, and every time Penny or Dilly really turns mud-brown on the page.
To rub hard with a brush and soap to make something clean. It comes up 7 times: Dilly scrubs her wings, Penny scrubs Dilly, Farmer Lin scrubs Penny, and at the end your child scrubs Penny too.
A little refrain comes back again and again (“Rub-a-dub-dub!”), so a pre-reader can join in by page four. Every other word is a common word, like pig, duck, farm, tub, brush and soap.
Questions to ask while you read
Pause after each spread and ask one question. There are no right answers; the point is to get your child talking.
- 1What can you see on the farm?
- 2Why does Penny love mud? Do you like mud?
- 3Why does Penny hide behind the hay?
- 4How does Dilly have a bath?
- 5Oh no! What happens to Dilly?
- 6How does Dilly feel? What does Penny say?
- 7How does Penny help her friend?
- 8Why does Penny want a bath now?
- 9Tap and scrub: where are Penny’s muddy spots?
- 10What makes Penny muddy again at the end?
Tips for parents
- First time: use Read to me and let your child just listen and watch.
- Before page five, stop and ask “What will happen if Penny jumps in the mud next to Dilly?”
- On the bath page, let your child point to each muddy spot and say “Scrub, scrub!” before tapping it.
- At bath time at home, make it a game: “Is your knee muddy? Scrub, scrub, rub-a-dub-dub!”