Book Summary:
This book starts as the classic tale of the three little pigs, but soon takes a different route when the pigs leave the pages of their story. The first little pig is blown out of the story by the big bad wolf as he is huffing and puffing and blowing the house down. This little pig then goes to the other pigs in their houses on the other pages of the books and they join him out of the pages and safe from the big bad wolf. The soon visit the pages of other books and meet Hey Diddle Diddle and a dragon from two different stories that decide to join the pigs on their venture out of books. They soon find a page from the pigs story, and it is agreed that the pigs and their new friends will return to their story to the brick house of the third pig. They all work together to straighten out the pages of the story and put the words back where they belong before enjoying supper.
APA Reference of Book:
Wiesner, D. (2001). The three pigs. New York, NY: Clarion Books.
Impressions:
This was my first exposure to the work of David Weisner, and I was unsure about having picture pages in a book without words for me to read, especially since I have been reading the books from our reading list to my three year old. I was unsure how exactly to handle these pages when I got to them while reading the books to him, but he immediately talked through those pages and was excited to have a chance to tell me what was occurring in those pages. Even though I was apprehensive, my son thoroughly enjoyed it. He was familiar with the story of the three little pigs, and he and I both enjoyed the familiar characters in the same story with a little twist. The pictures are amazing and are very engaging for the readers and they tell the story themselves without much help from written words.
Professional Review:
David Wiesner's postmodern interpretation of this tale plays imaginatively with traditional picture book and story conventions and with readers' expectations of both. (Though with Wiesner, we should know by now to expect the unexpected.) Astute readers will notice the difference between the cover's realistic gouache portrait of the threepigs (who stare directly out at the viewer with sentient expressions) and the simple outlined watercolor artwork on the title page. In fact, the style of the illustrations and the way the characters are rendered shifts back and forth a few times before the book is done, as Wiesner explores the possibility of different realities within a book's pages. The text, set in a respectable serif typeface, begins by following the familiar pattern--pigs build houses, wolf huffs and puffs, wolf eats two pigs, etc. But while the text natters on obliviously, the pigs actually step (or are huffed and puffed) out of the muted-color panel illustrations without being eaten. Escaping their sepia holding lines and the frames of their predictable storybook world, they enter a stark white landscape where they are depicted realistically with more intricate shading. The now-3-D-looking pigs, released from the story's inevitability, explore this surrealistic realm. The perplexed wolf remains behind in the two-dimensional pages, which, when viewed from thepigs' new vantage point, stand vertically in space, looking altogether like paper dominoes waiting to be knocked down. And that's what the three pigs do, with glee. The pigs' informal banter appears in word balloons in a sans-serif font; a few striking wordless spreads feature the pigs flying (this is Wiesner, after all) across blank spreads on a paper airplane made from a page of their story. Obviously, there's a lot going on here, but once you get your bearings, this is a fantastic journey told with a light touch. The pigs encounter other freestanding story pages; they enter and exit a nursery rhyme and then a folktale, morphing into and out of each one's illustrative style. Saccharine, cotton-candy illustrations cloy "Hey Diddle Diddle" ("Let's get out of here!" one pig exclaims); precise black-and-white line drawings dignify a folktale about a dragon who guards a golden rose. The cat and its fiddle as well as the chivalrous dragon join the pigs in full-color, realistic definition, and eventually the five friends end up back at the pigs' story. After shaking the type off the pages, the animals re-enter the tale--but this time on thepigs' own terms. The last page shows them all happily ensconced in the full-page watercolor illustration, using letters of text to write their own happy ending while the wolf sits outside at a nonthreatening distance. Wiesner may not be the first to thumb his nose at picture-book design rules and storytelling techniques, but he puts his own distinct print on this ambitious endeavor. There are lots of teaching opportunities to be mined here--or you can just dig into the creative possibilities of unconventionality.
K.F. (2001, May). The three pigs. The Horn Book Magazine, 77(3), 341. Retrieved from http://archive.hbook.com/magazine/
Library Uses:
I would use this book on a display table within the children's section that included books such as this one that take familiar characters and stories and retell them with a twist. Other titles that could be included are the True Story of the Three Little Pigs, Lon Po Po, and etc.
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