Stinky Pinky, Silly Willy… whatever you call them, Hink Pink rhyming word games are so much fun. Not only are they silly, sometimes tongue-twisting and entertaining word games to play, they’re also educational. They teach you to look at word combinations differently, locating synonyms quickly to discover a new rhyming set of words to describe something.

A Huge Hog is a Big Pig by Francis McCall and Patricia Keeler is a book of nothing but these games. Each page features a farm scene in real life, full color pictures. On the front of the page, the description for the hink pink is given; the first page, for example, reads, “A huge hog is a…” The reader should guess the answer to the game before turning the page and discovering that the answer is, “Big Pig!” Other hink pinks in the book include a swamp croaker (“bog frog”), wet hound (“soggy doggy”), silly rabbit (“funny bunny”) and many others.

A Huge Hog is a fabulous introduction to these word games for young children. It can be difficult to understand how Hink Pinks work—especially if you’re just beginning to understand rhymes to begin with; the photos help kids visualize the words and think of other ways the creatures in them might be described. Plus, since the photos are of children with animals—and all of the Hink Pinks save one are about animals—it adds a sparkling interest and self-awareness to the book so kids can empathize with the animal care experiences of the children in the book.

Activities or lessons to go with A Huge Hog are endless. Obviously, you could take it from here and look up Hink Pinks online or in other books, or even order Hink Pink activity books. Coming up with your own, of course, is a fun and challenging activity. You could also use the pictures in the book to come up with simple stories—why is the bunny so funny? What made the cat fat? You can create these and other creative prompts from the photos and rhymes in the story.

If you have younger readers at home who wish to follow along with their older brothers and sisters, you can also use the story for animal identification, prepositional phrase work, colors, and counting. Describing action verbs and adjectives are another good use of the photos. Kids love looking at other kids, which makes this book a universally fun one to share and enjoy.