The first 26 books.
Sweet Pickles is a series of children's books created by Jacquelyn Reinach, Richard Hefter and Ruth Lerner Pearle and published in the 1970s and 1980s. The books feature 26 anthropomorphic animal characters with different personalities. Each animal character represents a letter of the alphabet. The series takes place in the fictional town of Sweet Pickles, a town populated by anthropomorphic animals.
Books in the Sweet Pickles series include:
- Who Stole Alligator's Shoe?
- Scaredy Bear
- Fixed by Camel
- No Kicks for Dog
- Elephant Eats the Profits
- Fish and Flips
- Goose Goofs Off
- Hippo Jogs for Health
- Me Too Iguana
- Jackal Wants Everything
- Who Can Trust You, Kangaroo?
- Lion Is Down in the Dumps
- Moody Moose Buttons
- Nuts to Nightingale
- Octopus Protests
- Pig Thinks Pink
- Quail Can't Decide
- Rest, Rabbit, Rest
- Stork Spills the Beans
- Turtle Throws a Tantrum
- Happy Birthday, Unicorn
- Kiss Me, I'm Vulture
- Very Worried Walrus
- Xerus Won't Allow It
- Yakety Yak Yak Yak
- Zip Goes Zebra
An additional set of books:
- A Bad Break
- The Grand Prize
- The Great Race
- Ice Cream Dreams
- Quick Lunch Munch
- Rainy Day Parade
- Robot S.P.3
- The Secret Club
- Some Friend
- Wait! Wait! Wait
- Wet All Over
- Wet Paint
- What a Mess
- What's So Great About Nice?
Tropes in the Sweet Pickles books include:
- Alliterative Name: Every character in the series has one.
- Alphabetical Theme Naming: There are 26 animal characters in the series, one for each letter of the alphabet.
- A Dog Named "Dog": Pretty much every character in the series, whenever they're not called by their full names. Xerus is a variant as it's actually the scientific genus name for the African ground squirrel.
- Animal Stereotypes: Not as much as you'd think. A lot of the animals get personalities their species isn't normally associated with, like "vain" Vulture, "clever" Camel, "nasty" Nightingale, and "temper-tantrum" Turtle.
- Big Eater: Elephant. She has a tendency to overeat the food at the supermarket where she works, which endangers the business.
- Born from Plants: In Stork Spills the Beans, Alligator says she thinks babies come from cabbage plants.
- Can't You Read the Sign?: Xerus Won't Allow It has the title creature (a relative of the squirrel family) posting signs in an attempt to bring order in the town where she lives.
- Delivery Stork: Stork is the town's postman, although he mentions in one book that he has never delivered babies.
- The Ditherer: Questioning Quail's story involves her struggling to decide how to spend a dollar, physically and mentally going in circles and fretting even further when other citizens offer their advice.
- The Eeyore: Worried Walrus. His personality says it all.
- Fully-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Most of the characters are either this or Barefoot Cartoon Animals.
- Funny Animal: Every character in the book series are anthropomorphic animals.
- Furry Female Mane: Generally averted. Pig plays this straight since she is shown to have blonde hair.
- Gender-Equal Ensemble: There are thirteen male characters (Bear, Dog, Hippo, Jackal, Kangaroo, Lion, Moose, Rabbit, Stork, Vulture, Walrus, Yak and Zebra) and thirteen female characters (Alligator, Camel, Elephant, Fish, Goose, Iguana, Nightingale, Octopus, Pig, Quail, Turtle, Unicorn and Xerus).
- Green-Eyed Monster: Jealous Jackal really hates it when he never gets anything he wants, and Jackal Wants Everything is a perfect depiction on how he takes his anger out on anyone who he feels is much superior to him in some way.
- Green Gators: Accusing Alligator is green.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: The personality of Temper Tantrum Turtle, who throws a fiery fit when she doesn't get her way.
- The Hyena: Kidding Kangaroo is almost always laughing, especially when he plays pranks on others.
- Informed Species:
- Jackal looks nothing like a jackal, looking more like a tiger.
- Xerus looks like a red squirrel, rather than an African ground squirrel.
- Jerkass: Several characters, such as Accusing Alligator (who blames everything on everyone else), Jealous Jackal (who often takes his anger out on everyone else when he's feeling jealous of them), and the biggest one of them all being Nasty Nightingale (who is simply a bully).
- Lazy Bum: Goof-Off Goose is a Ridiculous Procrastinator who always claims she'll take care of a certain task later yet never actually follows through.
- Literal Metaphor: Lion Is Down in the Dumps, as well as Stork Spills the Beans.
- Loophole Abuse: Xerus in Xerus Won't Allow It gets a sign posted in front of her house banning her from putting up any more of her signs. She obeys but the book ends with her making stickers with her earlier prohibitions on them; she reasons nobody said anything about those.
- Mobile Fishbowl: Fearless Fish wears one.
- Mood-Swinger: Moody Moose really lives up to the adjective in front of his name. He just has no idea what to feel.
- Moral Guardians: This is more or less Xerus’s shtick, since she’s always trying to enforce rules that make things less fun.
- Motor Mouth: Yakety Yak.
- The Narcissist: Vain Vulture is just so obsessed with his looks and even believes he's better than everyone else.
- Nervous Wreck: Worried Walrus just worries about everything.
- Never My Fault: Accusing Alligator tends to blame everything on somebody else.
- The Prankster: Kidding Kangaroo practically lives off this, as the book revolving around him even has him indulging in pranks that even border on danger, which his victims even call him out on.
- Soapbox Sadie: Octopus is a preschooler-friendly version, especially in “Octopus Protests”.
- Surprise Party: In Jackal Wants Everything, Jackal is upset that he never seems to get anything that he wants and spoils a party because of it. So all of the kids in the series decide to throw him a surprise party the next day; but instead of being thankful for it, he instead proves himself to be a true Jerkass, upset that they spent all that time (the time while they were planning the party) doing fun stuff without him.
- Unicorn: Unique Unicorn is one of the animal characters.
- World of Funny Animals: Sweet Pickles is a town populated by Funny Animals.
- Wrench Wench: Camel fixes machinery and electrical equipment around town as seen in Fixed By Camel.
