40 Fun Facts About A Day No Pigs Would Die

What name does Rob Peck give the piglet he receives as a reward in A Day No Pigs Would Die?

Pinky is the first thing Rob has ever owned, a gift from a grateful neighbor. She follows him everywhere, and he spends her first night in her new pen sleeping beside her.

In A Day No Pigs Would Die, what does Rob Peck tie around a calf's head to pull it free?

His pants become a birthing rope: Rob knots one leg to the calf and the other to a tree, so the cow pulls her own calf out as she bolts. She then bites his arm and drags him along behind her.

Which Vermont-born US president is in office during the events of A Day No Pigs Would Die?

Calvin Coolidge was born in Plymouth Notch on the Fourth of July, and Rob's teacher tells her class that Vermonters should be proud of him. The story unfolds just before the Great Depression.

Which children's TV host, a college classmate of Robert Newton Peck, was an usher at his wedding?

Fred Rogers studied alongside Peck at Rollins College, years before Mister Rogers' Neighborhood reached television. Peck said the gentle host was also godfather to his two children.

In A Day No Pigs Would Die, Rob Peck mistakes which Revolutionary War hero for a baseball player on a test?

Ethan Allen led the Green Mountain Boys, the militia that seized Fort Ticonderoga in 1775. Rob assumes they are a baseball team, one he is forbidden to watch on Sundays.

Where did Robert Newton Peck write A Day No Pigs Would Die while holding down a New York job?

On his commuter train between Connecticut and New York, Peck drafted the whole book in about three weeks. It came out when he was 44 and became a best seller.

In A Day No Pigs Would Die, Rob Peck's father says being unable to read or write bars him from what?

Voting is closed to Rob's father because he is illiterate. He claims not to resent it, yet tells Rob a man should be valued for his practical skills instead.

Why does Rob Peck's father decide the family's pet pig must be slaughtered in A Day No Pigs Would Die?

She is barren, so she will never give the litters Rob dreamed of selling, and a poor family cannot feed a pig as a pet. Rob helps with the killing one December day, and weeps.

The title A Day No Pigs Would Die refers to the day of which event in Rob Peck's life?

His father's burial brings the farm's work to a halt, and the dead man earned his living slaughtering hogs. With the butcher gone, the animals are safe for one day.

In A Day No Pigs Would Die, what does Rob Peck do as a judge pins a ribbon on his pig?

He vomits after catching a whiff of pig manure in the show ring. His neighbors clean him up, then point out what the blue ribbon is for: the best-behaved pig at the fair.

Which neighbor rewards Rob Peck with a piglet for saving his cow in A Day No Pigs Would Die?

Ben Tanner is the better farmer of the two, by the reckoning of Rob's father, who admires how well he keeps his land. The piglet is his thanks for the safe delivery of two bull calves.

What is the first name of Rob Peck's father, the stern hog butcher of A Day No Pigs Would Die?

Haven was also the middle name of the author's real father, Frank. The fictional farmer is nearly sixty and never shows his son physical affection, yet his love is plain.

In A Day No Pigs Would Die, Rob Peck shows his pig at a fair held in which Vermont city?

Rutland dazzles Rob, who has never seen such crowds and fears he will miss something if he blinks. He rides there in a neighbor's horse-drawn wagon, because his own family keeps no horse.

In A Day No Pigs Would Die, which animal is shut in a barrel to fight Ira Long's terrier?

A weasel caught raiding the hen coop is the terrier's opponent, in a custom meant to make the dog hate the hen-killers. The dog wins but is so badly hurt that it has to be put down.

Where does Rob Peck find his father dead one May morning in A Day No Pigs Would Die?

In the barn, on a bed of straw, Rob's father has died in his sleep. The boy quietly finishes the morning chores before he breaks the news to the women of the house.

Which hard task does thirteen-year-old Rob Peck do himself on the day of his father's funeral?

Digging the grave in the family plot falls to Rob, who is now the man of the house. That evening he walks back out to the orchard alone to wish his father goodnight.

In A Day No Pigs Would Die, Rob Peck finds a paper on which his illiterate father practiced writing what?

His own name fills a scrap of paper that Rob finds in an old cigar box, and one attempt is almost perfect. It suggests the proud farmer minded his illiteracy more than he ever let on.

In A Day No Pigs Would Die, Rob Peck's report card is all A's apart from a D in which subject?

English earns Rob a D, which horrifies a visiting cousin who used to teach it. She appoints herself his tutor on the spot and draws him a sentence diagram there and then.

In A Day No Pigs Would Die, Rob Peck is startled to find that his kindest neighbors belong to which church?

Baptist worship was something Rob had been taught to dread, thanks to a schoolmate's mother and her lurid account of dunkings. Hearing the truth from a man he loves, he bursts out laughing.

Before A Day No Pigs Would Die became a bestseller, Robert Newton Peck worked in which New York trade?

Advertising kept Peck busy for two decades, until the success of his first novels let him quit in 1974. Before that he had tried a saw mill, a lumber camp, a paper mill and law school.

Which cow does Rob Peck help through a difficult birth at the start of A Day No Pigs Would Die?

Apron belongs to the farm next door, and Rob only comes upon her because he has walked out of school after a quarrel. Saving her and her calf costs him a week in bed.

After the calf is born in A Day No Pigs Would Die, what does Rob Peck pull from the choking cow's throat?

A goiter is what Rob tears loose to let her breathe, and the cow clamps down on his arm in return. Back home he is laid on a table while his mother sews up the wound herself.

What is the name of the Peck family's ox, who does the hauling in A Day No Pigs Would Die?

Solomon stands in for the horse the family lacks, pulling the wagon and dragging the pig's new shelter into place with a capstan. Rob hitches him up again on the morning his father dies.

Which relative, the eldest sister of Rob Peck's mother, lives with the family in A Day No Pigs Would Die?

Aunt Carrie is nearly seventy and, like Rob's parents, cannot read or write. She is easily scandalized, above all by a widow down the road who seems to be living with her hired man.

The Peck family farm in A Day No Pigs Would Die lies just outside which small Vermont town?

Learning has the church, the churchyard and the undertaker, and so many of its people attend the funeral of Rob's father that their respect for him is plain. The story begins there one April in the mid-1920s.

What does schoolmate Edward Thatcher mock, driving Rob Peck out of class as A Day No Pigs Would Die opens?

His clothes are old and sewn at home by his mother, and the taunts keep Rob from going back in after recess. The same boy also sneers at the family's Shaker ways.

In A Day No Pigs Would Die, Rob Peck longs for which store-bought item that his friend Jacob Henry owns?

A coat from a shop is the one luxury Rob admits to wanting; he has schooled himself not to ask for a bicycle. His father's view is that Shakers have no use for frills.

Which sequel to A Day No Pigs Would Die follows Rob Peck as he quits school to save the farm?

A Part of the Sky arrived in 1994, 22 years after the original. It picks up where the first book stops, with thirteen-year-old Rob looking for work to pay for the farm.

Which Robert Newton Peck series about a Vermont boy's scheming best friend was adapted for television?

Soup is the nickname of Luther, a well-meaning schemer whose plans keep landing the narrator in trouble. The books began in 1974, and two of them became ABC Weekend Specials.

Critics doubt the Pecks of A Day No Pigs Would Die are real Shakers, since the sect required what?

Celibacy was the rule in Shaker villages, where men and women lived apart and all property was held in common. A married farmer raising children on land he hopes to own fits none of it.

In A Day No Pigs Would Die, whose remains does Sebring Hillman try to unearth one stormy night?

His infant daughter was born to Letty Phelps, the family's maid and a relative of the Pecks, and died as a baby. Years on, he wants to rebury the child on his own land and admit she was his.

Which neighbor beats Rob Peck with a broom in A Day No Pigs Would Die, then later feeds him gingersnaps?

Iris Bascom thrashed Rob for running through her strawberry patch, then warmed to him when he moved her heavy flowerpots. It is she who passes on his wish to see the fair.

In A Day No Pigs Would Die, what are the two bull calves that Rob Peck shows at the fair called?

Bob and Bib are a neighbor's young oxen, and Bob is named after Rob, who pulled him into the world. Leading them round the ring to applause, Rob feels like somebody for the first time.

What kind of animal is Miss Sarah, who has three babies on the Peck farm in A Day No Pigs Would Die?

A cat with a lady's title, Miss Sarah produces three kittens while Rob and his pig are out walking the ridge. It is one of several births and deaths Rob witnesses in a single year.

At the fair in A Day No Pigs Would Die, what must Rob Peck buy after his pig rolls in dirt?

Soap is what an appalled Rob has to pay for when he finds his pig filthy just before her turn in the ring. He has already paraded a neighbor's young oxen to applause.

In A Day No Pigs Would Die, Rob Peck thinks the fair town looks almost as big as which world city?

London is, so Rob has been told at school, the biggest city in the world, and it is the only yardstick he has. The fair town is in truth a smallish one, yet even his father has never been.

Which Hollywood studio bought film rights to A Day No Pigs Would Die but never made the movie?

Twentieth Century Fox came calling after the book took in $300,000 in its first four months on sale. It also bought another Peck novel, Millie's Boy, and filmed neither.

A Day No Pigs Would Die ranked among the most challenged books of the 1990s on which group's list?

American Library Association records placed it 16th among the decade's most challenged titles, with complaints singling out a pig-breeding scene. The same body had named it a Best Book for Young Adults in 1973.

The Peck family of A Day No Pigs Would Die follow the Shakers, a sect brought to America by which preacher?

Ann Lee, known as Mother Ann, landed in New York with eight followers in 1774, after a vision told her to found a church across the ocean. Her sect thrived for decades, then had all but died out by the 1920s.

Because Rob Peck grows from boy to man in A Day No Pigs Would Die, critics give it which German label?

Bildungsroman is the term for a novel of growing up, and this one squeezes the change into little more than a year. In that time Rob loses his pet and his father and becomes head of the household.