Module 3: The Three Pigs

Book Summary:  This version of the three little pigs begins like the others.  However, this time the wolf huffing and puffing blows the first pig right off of the page and into the world of imagination.  The wolf is folded up as a paper airplane.  The pigs run from the wolf in a creative, imaginative way until they reenter the story with those they encountered along the way, the cat and the fiddle and a dragon, in tow. 

My Impressions:  This book has great illustrations to draw in every reader.  The illustrations falling off of the page made me giggle.  The ever changing perspective keeps you guessing along with the wolf being folded into a paper airplane.  This book is a must have for a library.

Professional Review: 

School Library Journal (April, 2001)

K-Gr 6-In Tuesday (Clarion, 1991), Wiesner demonstrated that pigs could fly. Here, he shows what happens when they take control of their story. In an L. Leslie Brooke sort of style (the illustrations are created through a combination of watercolor, gouache, colored inks, and pencils), the wolf comes a-knocking on the straw house. When he puffs, the pig gets blown "right out of the story." (The double spread contains four panels on a white background; the first two follow the familiar story line, but the pig falls out of the third frame, so in the fourth, the wolf looks quite perplexed.) So it goes until the pigs bump the story panels aside, fold one with the wolf on it into a paper airplane, and take to the air. Children will delight in the changing perspectives, the effect of the wolf's folded-paper body, and the whole notion of the interrupted narrative. Wiesner's luxurious use of white space with the textured pigs zooming in and out of view is fresh and funny. They wander through other stories-their bodies changing to take on the new style of illustration as they enter the pages-emerging with a dragon and the cat with a fiddle. The cat draws their attention to a panel with a brick house, and they all sit down to soup, while one of the pigs reconstructs the text. Witty dialogue and physical comedy abound in this inspired retelling of a familiar favorite.-Wendy Lukehart, Dauphin County Library, Harrisburg, PA

Library Uses:  This book, along with another version of the three pigs, could be used to compare and contrast two versions of the same story.

Another use would be to stop in before the end of the book and allow students to turn and share (or write) their own ending to the story before continuing and hearing the author’s version of the end of the story.

Wiesner, D. (2001). The three pigs. New York: Clarion Books.

Lukehart, W. (2011, April 1). [Review of the book The Three Pigs, by D. Weisner].  School Library Journal 47 (4) p 63.