Mercy Watson to the Rescue by Kate DiCamillo

Hey, Story Seekers!

Today we're following a pig who loves hot buttered toast, sleeps in a human bed, and has somehow convinced two perfectly reasonable adults that nearly everything she does is heroic.

This should go well.

Mercy Watson to the Rescue is written by Kate DiCamillo and illustrated by Chris Van Dusen. It's the first book in the Mercy Watson series and a terrific stepping stone for kids who are eyeing chapter books but aren't ready to give up big, funny pictures.

If you're new to Book Explorers, I'm Jungle Jimmy the Book Explorer, children's author, dad, and longtime performer for kids. Readit the Book Worm is my childlike sidekick. I notice how a story works with kids. Readit notices pigs, cookies, crashes, and anything that looks like it might get somebody in trouble.

Mercy has given him plenty to work with.

Book Breakdown

Mr. and Mrs. Watson adore Mercy.

Mercy is their pig.

Not a pig, as far as the Watsons are concerned. She is a "porcine wonder."

Mercy seems content with the arrangement, because the Watson household comes with two important things: a comfortable bed and hot buttered toast.

Then one night Mercy climbs into bed with Mr. and Mrs. Watson.

Bad idea.

The bed starts sinking through the floor.

The Watsons are trapped, and they immediately decide that Mercy has gone for help. Mercy, meanwhile, has something considerably more Mercy-like on her mind.

Food.

Specifically, whatever might be available next door.

That gap between what the Watsons think Mercy is doing and what Mercy is actually doing is where DiCamillo gets most of her comedy. Mr. and Mrs. Watson see a brave little rescuer. We see a pig following her stomach and accidentally stumbling toward something useful.

I like Mercy already.

From there it grows into chasing, neighbors, an emergency and enough commotion to keep a new chapter-book reader moving.

And here's the interesting part.

It looks substantial.

There are chapters. Eighty pages. A kid carrying this around is carrying an honest-to-goodness chapter book, and Candlewick sells it as exactly that: an early chapter book for ages 5 to 8.

But DiCamillo doesn't yank away everything that helped that reader succeed with picture books. The type is large. Chapters are short. The pages have room. And Chris Van Dusen's full-color paintings are everywhere.

Those pictures matter.

Van Dusen gives everyone enormous, unmistakable expressions. Mercy looks deeply pleased with herself. The Watsons beam at their beloved pig. Neighbor Eugenia Lincoln looks like she would prefer this pig vanish from the face of the earth.

You don't need a paragraph explaining that relationship.

Look at Eugenia.

You'll get it.

Van Dusen's paintings also give the story movement. There are crashes, running and general neighborhood chaos, and his pictures make those moments feel far bigger than the amount of text on the page.

DiCamillo, for her part, refuses to keep the vocabulary down on the floor. Kids will meet words they don't know.

"Porcine" shows up almost immediately.

Good.

There's a point where a developing reader needs books that don't make every single word easy. This one gives enough support around the hard words that a child can stretch without feeling like somebody took the ladder away.

The book has also picked up some serious shelf credentials since 2005. It's a New York Times bestseller, and the Wall Street Journal named it one of the 20 best children's books of the past twenty years.

For teachers and librarians: I'm not printing a Lexile or ATOS number here. The figures I could find for this title don't agree with each other, and a reading level that's off by a grade is worse than no reading level at all. Candlewick's own age range is 5 to 8, and Kirkus flagged the vocabulary as a genuine stretch for a brand-new reader. That's the honest guidance.

Jungle Jimmy's Journal

This is exactly the book I'd want sitting between the easy-reader shelf and the longer chapter books.

That jump can look enormous to a kid.

One day you're reading something with two sentences and a picture on every page. Then somebody hands you a little novel full of gray blocks of words and says, "Congratulations. You're ready."

Ready for what? Tax preparation?

Mercy gives kids the chapter-book feeling without making the experience suddenly feel like work.

There's another thing DiCamillo does that helps.

Repetition.

Mercy loves hot buttered toast. The Watsons believe Mercy is extraordinary. Certain phrases keep circling back.

An adult notices that repetition more than a child does, and some adult readers say plainly that it wears on them by the fourth reading. I can see that. If you're the one reading aloud every night, you will hear about the toast.

But for a developing reader, repetition is doing a job. Something familiar comes back. The child knows where they are. They recognize the pattern and get to feel fast.

And when you're reading aloud, you can lean into it rather than fight it.

I also like the joke underneath the whole rescue.

The Watsons think Mercy is Lassie.

Mercy thinks about toast.

That's it.

DiCamillo never makes Mercy secretly noble. The pig is wonderfully consistent. She follows what she wants, everybody else assigns grand motives to her, and somehow it works out.

Kids understand that kind of comedy perfectly.

The pictures help enormously with a group, too. Van Dusen paints expressions big enough to read across a room, the chase gives you places to speed up, and the sinking bed gives you places to slow down.

I'd have fun with Eugenia.

There is a character who does not require a subtle voice.

Readit's Review

Mercy gets in the BED?

She's a pig!

That was already a bad plan before the bed started breaking.

And then everybody thinks she's going to get help.

Nope.

Cookies.

I knew she wasn't rescuing anybody. Mercy is thinking about food almost all the time.

I like the chase because Eugenia is really mad and Mercy thinks running away is fun. That makes it worse.

Also, if I had to pick between sugar cookies and hot buttered toast, I'd pick the cookies.

Sorry, Mercy.

I think first graders could read this, but there are definitely words where I'd ask what they mean.

Like "porcine."

Why not just say pig?

Actually, never mind. Porcine wonder sounds funnier.

What Others Think

This one has been around since 2005, so there's plenty to look through.

On Goodreads it sits at 4.10 out of 5 from 14,246 ratings.

The pattern that keeps showing up is the bridge. Readers describe it doing a specific job: getting a kid from easy readers into something that feels like a real book.

My favorite version of that came from somebody reading it to the child they nanny, twice in a row: "it had chapters. damn right i'm counting it toward my challenge."

That is the feeling, exactly. The chapters are the point. A first grader knows the difference between a book with chapters and a book without, and they care about it far more than adults expect.

A librarian noted something practical that doesn't show up in the star rating: "This circulates so well at my library." Books that go out and come back and go out again are telling you something a rating can't.

Another reader described it as all whimsy and sunshine, which is a fair read of Van Dusen's artwork.

The grown-ups aren't unanimous. The most common complaint is the repetition: the repeated names, the repeated phrasing, and Mercy's unending obsession with toast, which can get grinding on a fourth read-aloud. A few readers also find the retro quality doesn't connect with their kids.

Kirkus lands somewhere practical. It praised the action and the humor, then noted that DiCamillo's vocabulary can be difficult for a novice reader, making the book better suited to a child ready to move up, or to shared reading.

I think that's the right warning.

This isn't the book for a child who figured out Hop on Pop yesterday.

It's the next bridge.

Belly Laugh Scale

4 out of 5: Big-Time Belly Laughs

Mercy is funny because she has absolutely no idea she's starring in the heroic version of this story.

The Watsons see courage.

Mercy sees toast.

Add a collapsing bed, a furious neighbor, a chase, Van Dusen's enormous reactions and DiCamillo's circling repetition, and there's plenty here for a first-grade audience.

It doesn't reach Laugh-Out-Loud Legend for me, because the comedy leans hard on the same handful of running ideas and you can feel the machinery by the end.

But those ideas work.

Especially the pig.

Final Explorer Verdict

I'd put Mercy Watson to the Rescue in the hands of first and second graders ready to move past easy readers but still wanting pictures, short chapters and comedy carrying them along.

It's also a good shared read for a child who can handle most of the sentences alone but needs a hand when DiCamillo drops a bigger word on the page.

If your reader isn't there yet, We Are in a Book! does the earlier job: it shows a developing reader how much fun a very accessible book can be.

Mercy is the one that says, "Okay. Want to try something bigger?"

Eighty pages.

Chapters.

A bigger vocabulary.

Still plenty of pictures.

And one pig who would trade the entire literary achievement for another piece of hot buttered toast.

Fair enough.

She's also on our list of the best books for 6-year-olds, where the chapter-book jump is the whole reason she made the cut.

Until our next expedition, keep exploring those books.

Jungle Jimmy & Readit