The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka

1.      Bibliography

Scieszka, Jon. 1996. THE TRUE STORY OF THE THREE LITTLE PIGS. by Lane Smith. New York, NY: Puffin Books. ISBN 0140544518.

2.      Plot Summary

This children’s storybook is a creative variant based on the traditional of The Three Little Pigs. In this story, the wolf is the narrator. He claims that the traditional story is wrong and he implies that he was going to each of the three pigs’ houses in search of some sugar to bake a cake for his “dear old granny.” However, each time he gets a bad cold and sneezes so hard that he blows the first and second pigs’ houses down. As a result, he finds the pigs dead and insists that he eats them because he claims that it is a waste to just leave good ham dinners out to spoil. By the time he gets around to the third pig, who builds his of bricks, he is caught trying to break into this pig’s house and is arrested. From jail, he insists that people ran with the traditional story because it is more exciting than the story of a sick guy going to these pig’s houses in search of some sugar. He also claims that he was framed.

3.      Critical Analysis

What this book reveals to children is that anyone may take a traditional tale like The Three Little Pigs and make it their own. It encourages children to make distinctive comparisons and contrasts between traditional tales and their invented variants. It also inspires children to take it a step further by possibly inventing their own variants of traditional tales. Scieszka’s language in this book applies a very crafty and modern twist to such a traditional tale. Smith’s illustrations in the book are quite cartoonish and amusing, yet sophisticated

enough to attract children in the intermediate elementary grades (3^rd-5^th grade).

4.      Review Excerpts

Publisher’s Weekly-“Imaginative watercolors eschew realism, further updating the tale.”

Amazon.com- “As with The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, the collaborators take a classic story and send it through the wisecracker machine, much to the glee of kids young and old.”

5.      Connections

Related books may include:

·         Scieszka, Jon. THE STINKY CHEESE MAN AND OTHER FAIRLY STUPID TALES. ISBN 067084487X.

·         Trivizas, Eugene. THE THREE LITTLE WOLVES AND THE BIG BAD PIG. ISBN 068981528X.