Book Review For:
THE TRUE STORY
OF THE THREE LITTLE PIGS! Retold by Jon Scieszka. New York: Viking Kestrel,
1989. ISBN 9780670827596
Children who are already familiar
with THE THREE LITTLE PIGS tale will have their brains thinking in a totally
different pattern with this tale which is refreshingly told from the wolf’s
point of view. The book cover illustration shows A. Wolf’s picture on the front
page of a newspaper being held in a pig’s hoof. In this picture, the fact that he
is wearing a distinguished, domestic suit and bow tie gets the reader wondering
if he might possibly be a good guy. The illustrations throughout the story,
however, remain mostly dark, indicating his dark nature, perhaps?
The wolf starts off presenting his
case that he’s really not bad, he just has allergy problems (hence the huffing
or sneezing) and needed a cup of sugar for his “dear sweet old granny’s birthday
cake” (hence a motive for being at the scene of the crime). One illustration
depicts bunny ears sticking up out of the cake mix, which reminds the readers
of his natural eating habits and that he’s not so innocent.
At the first pig’s house of straw,
he claims the door merely fell in when he knocked on it, and when no one
responded, he was going to head on home. Then he sneezed, accidentally killing
the first little pig. (All the illustrations show of the dead pig is a rounded
rump sticking up from the dirt, and the wolf is in the distance observing the
scene with a hanky!) The wolf says he hated “to leave a perfectly good ham
dinner lying there”, so he ate it.
At the second pig’s house of sticks,
the scenario repeats, naturally.
Still without a cup of sugar, the
wolf heads to the third little pig’s house made of bricks and knocks on the
solid fortress’s door. According to the wolf, this little pig was very rude,
telling him to leave and not bother him. The wolf’s allergies caused him to
start sneezing, and the pig hollered that his “old granny can sit on a pin!”
This infuriated the wolf, and that was why he was trying to knock down the door
and huffing and sneezing when the police arrived. The illustrations show the
wolf in action at the scene, from the viewpoint of a news reporter, amidst the police
and a microphone. This picture of the wolf is shown in the newspaper on the
following page with the headline “BIG BAD WOLF!”
The wolf says the news reporters
didn’t think that wanting to borrow a cup of sugar was exciting enough, so they
enhanced the sneezing into huffing and puffing the pigs’ houses down. The wolf
is still proclaiming his innocence at the end of the story, and from behind
bars, in a striped prisoner’s uniform, holding out a cup with the words “PIG
PENN” on it, asking readers to loan him a cup of sugar. This leaves the reader
to be the judge of if this was his true motive all along. Was it possible, after
all, that he was framed? Or is he full of hot air? (Wink, wink!)
Although author Jon Scieszka and
illustrator Lane Smith have won many awards for other works, I could not find
any awards for this particular title. The SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL calls it “the
fractured fairy-tale gold standard, with tongue-in-cheek text and sophisticated
artwork both darkly sinister and delightfully droll” (Fleishhacker 2012).
After
sharing this story with children, one could discuss how it is similar and
different than the original tale or ask the children to pick another villain
from a different fairy tale and rewrite a story from their perspective.
References
Fleishhacker, Joy. "Folk and
fairy tales retold: Spin offs." SLJ.com. SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL, last
modified July 1, 2012, accessed September 24, 2013, http://www.slj.com/2012/07/books-media/folk-and-fairy-tales-retold-spin-offs-focus-on/.
