Sweet Pickles

Sweet Pickles is a series of 40 children's books by Ruth Lerner Perle, Jacquelyn Reinach, and Richard Hefter and published by Holt, Rinehart & Winston, having sold over 50 million copies. The books are set in the fictional town of Sweet Pickles and are about anthropomorphic animals with different personalities and behavior. There are 26 animals—one for each letter of the alphabet. The books were published in 1977 and went out of print in the mid-1990s. The authors also created Stickybear and the Strawberry Library.

The series' name is a pun; in each book, the main character gets into a "pickle" (a difficult situation) because of an all-too human personality trait. The front endpapers of the books portrayed the 26 characters, and the back endpapers portrayed a map of the town.

The books were advertised with television commercials and a catchy jingle. There also existed a similar series, The Alphapets, on which Ruth Lerner Perle collaborated in the early 1990s. Some speculate that the reason the series was retired was because despite that it was an alphabet series with one book for each letter of the alphabet, the books did not teach the alphabet like the alphabet series of today which feature words throughout the story beginning with the respective letter.

The Sweet Pickles books were read in various episodes of the CBS television series Captain Kangaroo.

In 2012, the brand is celebrating its 35th Anniversary and the books are being re-released as digitally enhanced E-Books. Professional sound effects, narration and character voices performed by award-winning voice actors have been added to the books to create a fun and engaging reading experience for the whole family. The first 26 Books (A-Z) will be available at all major E-Retailers by Summer 2012. The E-Books were developed by Bento Box Interactive. Bento Box Interactive is a spin-off company of Bento Box Entertainment.