That’ll Do, Dick

Anthropomorphizing Brit kid lit author Dick King-Smith has died at the age of 88. Putting his 20 years as a farmer to use, most of Smith’s 100 titles, totaling more than 15 million books sold worldwide, were about animals, starting in 1979 with The Fox Busters, about chickens taking their revenge on foxes, and most of his 100 titles were about animals. His favorite animal was the pig, and his biggest hit was about a pig acting like a sheepdog: The Sheep Pig, or Babe: The Gallant Pig, as they called it for dimwitted Americans, which led to the James Cromwell opuses Babe and Babe: Pig in the City.