The Three Pigs by David Wiesner

The Three Pigs by David Wiesner is a variation of the classic story of The Three Little Pigs. The story begins exactly the same way as the classic tale. By the third page, however, the tale begins to veer away from the beloved story that has been told over the years. The pigs escape from the story panels and fly to other stories via a paper airplane that is constructed from one of the pages of the original story. The pigs explore the world of the nursery rhyme Hey Diddle Diddle the Cat and the Fiddle and an adventure story about a dragon who is going to be slain. The pigs then return to their classic story in the company of the cat and the dragon from the two aforementioned stories and “live happily ever after.”

The premise of the story sounds really interesting and innovative. I loved the variations on the classic fairy tales that were featured in Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes. However, I did not enjoy the delivery of the story in this particular book. The design of the book is more favorable to individual readings and is very difficult to read aloud. Attempting to read all of the pig’s comments while reading the text that was featured from the original story was awkward and could be somewhat confusing when read aloud.

On a positive note, the art in the book is very appealing to the eye and the author’s use of different styles of illustrations was clever. In the book, the three pigs’ appearances were altered to correspond to the style of the different tales through which they traveled. I appreciate the illustrator’s combination of all of these different styles and really liked the idea of the pigs adventuring into other stories.

Despite my personal dislike for the book, I feel that this work would be a good addition for inclusion in the primary library collection. However, I would not choose this book as a text that would be read aloud to a group of students.

Wiesner, D. (2001) The three pigs. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

Caldecott Award Winner