Misfit Toys

The Christmas Pig by J.K. Rowling

My parents got me this book for Christmas, thinking it was something cute we could all read together. It was also a J.K. Rowling book, and being me, I’m a huge fan of Harry Potter, so heck... it seemed perfect.

I started reading this book with my mom the day after Christmas. We quickly discovered that what we thought was going to be a sweet and innocent children’s story was quite darker. I guess we should have guessed this with Rowling at the wheel.

The story itself is very beautiful and contains many themes that were present in the Potter saga, such as love as the most powerful source of magic and a willingness to fight for what it right. The book follows Jack, a little 6-year-old boy who deeply loves his stuffed animal, Der Pig, called DP for short. DP and Jack share a bond beyond breaking, a bond I am sure all of us have felt some time or another with our most treasured Things. But Jack’s world is about to change. Suddenly, he has a new family, and everything is different. DP understands all. But then one day, DP is tragically lost, just before Christmas. A replacement pig is given to Jack, named the Christmas Pig, or CP, but CP isn’t DP, and Jack, with the help of CP, sets off on a magical and surreal quest to find DP, who he believes is the only one who can comfort him amidst his new strange world. Jack and CP, in Rowling’s magical way, then travel to the Land of the Lost, a land for lost Things, in search of DP.

This book not only pulls at the heartstrings of all those who have experienced childhood, but also tackles some surprisingly challenging topics: loss, grief, change (both of the family structure and how growing up can be terrifying), and even the nature of sacrifice. This book, more than a little, traumatized me. I’m not yet sure if it was in a good way, though I’m giving 5 stars so it must have. The Land of the Lost, which has a similar structure to the underworld of Greek Mythology (split into 3 sections, one bad, one ok, one good- with an island for the best, and then a land similar to Tartarus), is inherently terrifying. For anyone who has lost anything (which is all of us), there is a certain depth this book goes into about the nature of losing something, and where lost things go when they cannot be found (or when we don’t want them found). It’s terribly sad, as the book covers perhaps dozens of lost Things, all with different backstories of how they were lost.

Think of this story as a mix between Toy Story and the Island of Misfit Toys 🧸 from Rudolph. This is not a story you should give to a young child, even if it is marketed that way. I cried several times. My mom even asked: “what kind of a story is this?” This book will make you want to hug your most treasured Thing close and never let go.