by Robert Newton Peck

Originally published in 1972, A Day No Pigs Would Die is a semi-autobiographical novel by Robert Newton Peck about Rob Peck, a boy coming of age in rural Vermont on an impoverished farm.^[1] Originally published in 1972, it is one of the first books to be categorized as young adult fiction.

While skipping school one day, twelve-year-old Rob Peck finds himself assisting a neighbor’s cow through the delivery of a pair of calves (and saving her life from her goiter). He is injured in the process, but eventually recovers and the farmer whose animals he helped gives Rob a piglet. He names the piglet Pinky. Pinky quickly becomes Rob’s best friend and closest companion save for his father, Haven, a butcher working to save money to pay off the Peck family’s farm. 

For young adults, age 12-13 or grades 7-9.