Breaking the Pig

A special illustrated edition of Etgar Keret’s popular story about an endearing young boy and a friendship he strikes with a piggy bank. This is how it begins: “Dad wouldn’t buy me a Bart Simpson doll. Mom really wanted to, but Dad wouldn’t, he said I was spoiled.
‘Why should we?’ he said to Mom. ‘Why should we buy it for him? He just snaps his fingers and you jump to attention.’ Dad said I had no respect for money and that if I didn’t learn when I was little when was I going to learn? Kids who get Bart Simpson dolls at the drop of a hat turn into punks who steal from convenience stores, cause they wind up thinking they can have whatever they want, just like that. So instead of a Bart doll he bought me an ugly porcelain pig with a slot in its back.

Every morning now I’m supposed to drink a cup of hot cocoa, even though I hate it. With the skin it’s one shekel, without the skin it’s half a shekel, and if I throw up right after I drink it, I don’t get anything. I drop the coins into the slot in the pig’s back, and then, when you shake him you can hear them jingle.  Soon as the pig is so full of coins that it doesn’t jingle when you shake it, I get a Bart-Simpson-on-a-skateboard doll. That’s what Dad says, that way it’s educational.”