A Google user
This book is an excellent book with a ton of emotion that packs a punch and holds on to you. A Day No Pigs Would Die deals with a 12 year old boy who encounters various emotional situations dealing with his beloved pig and dad.
A Day No Pigs Would Die is a tiny slice of genius dealing with a 12 year old boy named Robert Peck who has to help his father on their farm. It can't be judged by a descriptive birthing scene in the first chapter, or the descriptive "climax" toward the end. Shocking things happen but also funny events. We are allowed to see a young boy growing into a man, and the responsibilities he accepts at such a young age are remarkable. Today's children could take a lesson from 12-year old Robert Peck; less video games, less television, more hard work (reading and learning is included, not just farm work). Many exciting things happen in this book that may astound in many ways.
Almost all of the action takes place on the Shaker farm that belongs to Haven Peck and his family. We see a written relationship between a son who loves his father, and while his father is not a great man as many would measure him; his son wants to grow up to be just like him because he sees greatness in his father. Readers may not agree with the strictness applied by the father, but the man is loving and caring, and intent on teaching his son how to be a man, and how to act properly.
With the "graphic" nature of the novel, it wasn't graphic - it was descriptive. If the description in the first chapter of Rob's assistance in birthing the two cows was the only place such description was used, then it could be considered gratuitous, but it wasn't. The author was detailed in his detail, even for the most mundane things, like creating a tool to help their ox create a pen for Rob's new pig, Pinky.
Early in the novel Rob receives a piglet as a reward for saving the life of a neighbor's cow. Robert names the pig Pinky and she becomes his cherished pet. Pinky is infertile however which means that the only existing alternative for the monetarily struggling Peck family is to butcher the pig. These problems, combined with the passing away of his father deeply change Rob and force him to grow up and become a man. The book is filled with facts about the way Shaker's live and approach the world around.
A Google user
It didn't really have much of a plot, and I, personally, think that it was really boring. The ending was terrible, too.