Book Review: The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs
Rated by 1 member
What Parents Should Know
The wolf's delightfully outrageous story is a surefire
attention-grabber, while the silly yet radiant artwork adds to
the book's appeal.
Common Sense Media Review
This send-up of the well-known story also makes fun of the
tendency to clean up classic fairy tales to suit modern tastes.
Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith go over the top to give this parody
the same kind of shock value as the fairy tales of old.
The wolf's wisecracking set off gales of laughter from a library full of six-year-olds--there is also a life lesson being taught: namely, don't be so quick to judge behavior. The book is a good introduction to the playfulness of parody, how a seemingly carefree laugh-along can coexist with deeper ideas.
The writer and the illustrator might well have been separated at birth, so perfectly do they fill any holes that may be missing from either text or artwork. Scieszka's verbal pizzazz, combined with Smith's expressionist paintings, leave no gaps to be filled.
Another Scieszka-Smith success story in the same vein is The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, and for juicy nonsense for middle graders, try Daniel Pinkwater's Fat Men From Space.
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