Lots of fun-and certain to be the object of repeat-reading demands. Plot Gritch the Witch wants to make one of her favorite meals - piggie pie - but she lacks the crucial ingredients of piggies. But instead of the expected heart-to-heart, Louise takes a chomp out of Grandmama too. Clarion Books) Piggie Pie is a 1995 children's picture book by Margie Palatini and illustrated by Howard Fine. The story looks like it's headed down an overly familiar lane when Grandmama Sadie positions herself as the only gator who truly understands Louise (“This is only a phase my little joy is going through,” she avers, chucking Louise under her scaly chin). Reinhart (the Encyclopedia Prehistorica pop-ups) gleefully records the mayhem with nicely nutty watercolor-and-ink cartoons that take full advantage of Louise's propensity to go for the gluteus maximus. She was really, really, truly quite sorry”).

) goes on to chronicle how Louise's biting manages to drive everyone around her to the brink, including an entire beach full of day trippers (“Louise was sorry. Everywhere.” (A bite-size “hole” on the jacket suggests that it, too, has succumbed to Louise's insatiable maw.) In wryly well-bred cadences that are a hoot to read aloud, Palatini ( Piggie Pie (Oct.Louise is a pigtailed, pint-size alligator with “new gleaming-white baby choppers”-which, unfortunately, give her a “tendency to. His vertiginous perspectives and distorted caricatures aren't quite as extreme here as in the witch's debut, yet Gritch remains one ugly and unpredictable customer in this fast-paced comedy. Fine makes his own visual asides to pop-culture sorcery, and shows the porky wiseacres of Piggie Pie driving past Gritch in their own shiny car. Palatini loads the story with off-hand references to such witchy standbys as ''Hansel and Gretel,'' The Wizard of Oz and the TV series Bewitched and pokes fun at the stereotypically sleazy salesguy. There (in a sly reference to a Laurel and Hardy routine), a fast-talker named Foxy tries to interest her in a broom named ''Witch 1,'' instigating a silly ''Which one?''/ ''Witch 1!'' conversation. After a slapstick tumble into a haystack, she dusts herself off and marches to a broom showroom.

And away they all flew like.'' At this point, in midair, Gritch learns that her trusty vehicle has given up the ghost. ''So with a Hi-ho and a Der-io, Gritch grabbed her hat, to her broom gave a whistle, and away they all flew like. As the story begins, Gritch snacks on a ''batscotti'' bat-wing cookie, but her stomach growls for ''Rabbit Rye,'' and she fixates on obtaining its main ingredient. Gritch the Witch, the flamboyantly grotesque antiheroine of Piggie Pie, spells trouble in this broom-buying caper.

Piggie Pie! by Margie Palatini