The Three Pigs

The Three Pigs
By David Weisner
Grades: K-2

We all know the original story of the Three Little Pigs, right? In this version, the wolf comes to blow the pigs’ houses down but blows so hard that he blows the pigs right out of the story! The three pigs travel through nursery rhymes and tales about dragons trying to find their way back to their own story. Will the pigs make it back to their story? Will the wolf catch up to them and make the pigs his dinner? Find out by reading David Weisner’s The Three Pigs.

This story is a spoof of the original story of the Three Little Pigs. The hungry wolf comes to the first pig’s house and blows so hard that he ruins the house and blows the pig right out of the story. On his way to the other pigs’ houses, the wolf is surprise to see that no one is home because the first pig rescued his brothers and brought them out of the story. The pigs travel through Hey Diddle Diddle where they befriend a cat who continues with the pigs on their journey to get back to their story. Along the way they travel through a story about a knight and dragon where the dragon ends up following the pigs and the cat to try and make it back to their story. The pigs build a paper airplane and they, including the cat and dragon, make it back to the story. The wolf sees the pigs with the cat and dragon and runs away like a coward.

The characters in this story are three pigs, a wolf, and a cat and dragon from another story. The setting consists of the setting in the houses of the pigs but shifts from their houses to a nursery rhyme to a medieval period when the wolf blows the pigs out of their own story. The problem/solution is the three pigs must venture through other stories to escape the wolf who is trying to eat them and the solution occurs when the three pigs make successfully make it back to their own story. The resolution of the story occurs when the three pigs make it back to their story with a cat from the nursery rhyme story and a dragon from the medieval story who protects their homes. The theme of this story is cleverness. This theme can get students to think about times they have ever had to use cleverness to get themselves out of a particular situation.

This book is modern fantasy but fits in the category of animal fantasy. This book includes talking animals who have human characteristics, such as speech.

This would be a good book to have in a classroom library because this book is one of the many versions written about the Three Little Pigs. You could read your class several books based on The Three Pigs then have the class compare and contrast the stories. The Three Pigs is also a good picture book that introduces children to a story that has more than one story in it. The pigs travel through dimensions or other stories in order to make it back to their own world. This version of the Three Little Pigs is a humorous story and takes readers on a journey not just through the pigs’ story but other stories as well.

The MA ELA Framworks for this book are, RL.3.3. Describe characters in a story (e.g., their traits, motivations, or feelings) and explain how their actions contribute to the sequence of events, RL.5.5. Explain how a series of chapters, scenes, or stanzas fits together to provide the overall structure of a particular story, drama, or poem, MA.8.A. Identify elements of fiction (e.g., characters, plot, setting, plot, problem, solution) and elements of poetry (e.g., rhyme, rhythm, figurative language, alliteration, onomatopoeia).