The Three Pigs

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The Three Pigs

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

 

Age Level:  4 and up

Genre:  This is a picture book.

Summary: 

The Three Pigs is a picture book that views the traditional story of the Three Little Pigs from the pigs’ perspective. As each pig literally escapes the pages of the story they meet other storybook characters along the way. In the end a great feast is shared with all the characters in the pig’s brick house with the wolf seen through a window all alone.

The story starts off with no surprises. The traditional story is told and the illustrations seem to be done with colored pencil and watercolors. As you turn to page two and three the story takes a turn. As the wolf is blowing the straw house down the pig inside leaps out of the story and appears to be outside of the page. A chat bubble is used to show the reader what the pig is saying or thinking. He exclaims that the wolf “blew (him) right out of the story”. As each pig is introduced they join the other pigs “outside the story.”

 Then the pigs get out of control and start making paper airplanes out of the pages of the story and use them to fly to other traditional literature storybook tales. They meet Hey Diddle Diddle and a dragon. They join the pigs as they all go back to the brick house to have some soup!

Reflection: 

            When I fist came across this Caldecott award winning picture book I though to myself, “The story of the Three Little Pigs won an award? How could this over done story possibly be any different than the hundreds of others that are out there?” Well, David Wiesner definitely created a different take on the classic story.

            The composition of the story is what guides the reader. Without the illustrations, there would be no story. Each page frame was manipulated by the characters “outside the story”. Some pages were torn up, some were made into a a paper airplane, and some where wadded up. The imagery used to show the characters taking over the story was fantastic!It was very detailed and showed action.

The artistic means used in this book are drawings (colored pencil, colored ink, and pencil) and paintings (watercolor). When the pigs went to the land of Hey Diddle Diddle, the artistic style changed from realistic to cartoon. 

  

Again. without these beautiful illustrations, the book would not exist.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book because it took a traditional fairytale and surprised me with new unexpected elements. This book would be great to use to show students how you can take a story so familiar and use creativity to alter it just enough to give it surprise without changing the framework of the original work. The story of the Three Little Pigs was not lost in this book. It was twisted enough to get my attention but still communicated the traditional story line. I now understand why it won an award!