The True Story of the Three Little Pigs

The True Story of The Three Little Pigs

By A. Wolf

As told by Jon Scieszka

Illustrated by Lane Smith

Grades 3 - 5 

In The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, Alexander T. Wolf, or Al for short, finally gets to share his side of the infamous tale. One day Al, a dedicated grandson, was baking a cake for his dear old Granny’s birthday even though he was suffering from a miserable cold. But to Al’s dismay, he realized he had forgotten to get sugar. He took a walk up to the neighbor’s house to borrow a cup of sugar, and we all know what the first pig’s house was constructed with. That house could have blown to pieces from even the faintest of sneezes! By the time Al reached his the third house, still without any sugar for dear old Granny’s cake, the police were called. The media ran wild! Writers embellished the story, blowing it way out of proportion. Perhaps the true story of a wolf with an unfortunate sneezing cold wasn't exciting enough to get those tabloids off the shelves and into readers’ hands. Sadly, Al never got any sugar, and his dear old Granny never got to enjoy her birthday cake. 

The humor of this fractured fairy tale makes for an engaging twist on the traditional tale of the Three Little Pigs. The book has great, creative illustrations that help to support the text, and help readers to envision the story’s events from the wolf’s perspective.

           In other fairy tales and traditional literature wolves are typically portrayed as villains. In the classroom, I would read The True Story of the Three Little Pigs alongside a traditional version of the tale so that students could compare and contrast the two stories, analyzing how the versions differ resulting from the change in perspective. I would ask the students to choose a one perspective to support, and using evidence from the stories to explain which character or characters they think are the villains and which characters are the victims. Do the pigs preserve their innocence even after reading the wolf’s side of the story? Or is Al’s perspective more convincing? The True Story of The Three Little Pigs is a good book to help students explore how differences in narration and point of view effect how the events of the story are described.

Connections to the Common Core:

RL. 3. Grade 3: Distinguish their own point of view from that of the narrator and those of the characters.

RL. 7. Grade 3: Explain how specific aspects of a text’s illustrations contribute to what is conveyed by the words in a story (e.g. create mood, emphasize aspects of character or setting).

RL.3. Grade 4: Describe in depth a character, setting or event in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text.

RL.6. Grade 4: Compare and contrast the point of view from which different stories are narrated.

RL.3. Grade 5: Compare and contrast two or more characters, settings, or events in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in a text.

RL.6. Grade 5: Describe how a narrator or speaker’s point of view influences how the events are described.