This picture book begins placidly (and familiarly) enough, with three pigs collecting materials and going off to build houses of straw, sticks, and bricks. But the wolf's huffing and puffing blows the first pig right out of the story . . . and into the realm of pure imagination. The transition signals the start of a freewheeling adventure with characteristic David Wiesner effects?cinematic flow, astonishing shifts of perspective, and sly humor, as well as episodes of flight. Satisfying both as a story and as an exploration of the nature of story, The Three Pigs takes visual narrative to a new level. Dialogue balloons, text excerpts, and a wide variety of illustration styles guide the reader through a dazzling fantasy universe to the surprising and happy ending. Fans of Tuesday's frogs and Sector 7's clouds will be captivated by old friends?the Three Pigs of nursery fame and their companions?in a new guise.
The Three Pigs FROM OUR EDITORS The Barnes & Noble Review
Never doubt the power of a pig. We suspect this was David Wiesner's mantra when creating this brilliantly innovative fractured fairy tale.
What begins as a the classic tale of "The Three Pigs" evolves into a free-for-all when the Big Bad Wolf's efforts to blow down the straw house of Pig No. 1 have unexpected consequences -- Pig is blown right of the story! He ends up on the pages of the book, falling out of the frame and transformed into a three-dimensional character. This leaves Wolf completely bewildered. As he approaches Pig No. 2 and his house of twigs, he tries again. But Pig's brother arrives just in time, with news that there is safety outside the confines of the storybook pages. The brothers exit, and Wolf is once again befuddled. When the pigs reach their other brother in the brick house, the three of them decide it's time to get away from Wolf for good. They pummel the storybook frames until they are completely flat -- and then they make an airplane! After a bit of soaring, they crash-land. Finally, they realize that they're being watched. Readers will squeal with delight as one of the pigs peers into the audience, his face filling the entire page. The Three Pigs then jump into the pages of other rhymes, meeting up with a very friendly dragon and a sweet cat. At this point, the entire crew join forces and decide to teach Wolf a lesson. They reconstruct the story frames, and when Wolf begins to blow a pig's house down, Dragon jumps in and gives him the scare of his life. The gang have created a home of their own and a new beginning. And as in any other fairy tale, they live happily ever after.
Wiesner uses a combination of watercolor, gouache, colored inks, and pencils to achieve his varied perspectives. This sophisticated style and humor will not escape young readers. His creative chaos is fresh and rejuvenating, adding wit and style to typical fairy-tale fare. Particularily stunning is Wiesner's use of white space, which evokes the many possibilities these clever pigs possess. We give Wiesner's awesome creation...two snouts up. (Amy Barkat)
ANNOTATION The three pigs escape the wolf by going into another world where they meet the cat and the fiddle, the cow that jumped over the moon, and a dragon.
FROM THE PUBLISHER Three pigs...
Straw, sticks, bricks...
Huffs and puffs...
You probably know the rest.
It's an old story,
And every time someone tells it
The same thing happens.
But who says it's suposed to?
Who's in charge of this story?
Who gets to decide?
Has anyone asked the pigs?
No?
Well, it's about time someone did.
Here,
Thanks to David Wiesner,
Is the answer.
FROM THE CRITICS New York Times Review of Books Wiesner's dialogue and illustrations are clever, whimsical and sophisticated.
Publishers Weekly Even the book's younger readers will understand the distinctive visual code. As the pigs enter the confines of a storybook page, they conform to that book's illustrative style, appearing as nursery-rhyme friezes or comic-book line drawings. When the pigs emerge from the storybook pages into the meta-landscape, they appear photographically clear and crisp, with shadows and three dimensions. Wiesner's (Tuesday) brilliant use of white space and perspective (as the pigs fly to the upper right-hand corner of a spread on their makeshift plane, or as one pig's snout dominates a full page) evokes a feeling that the characters can navigate endless possibilitiesDand that the range of story itself is limitless. Ages 5-up. (Apr.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Artwork explodes off the page and the layout pushes bookmaking convention as the porcine siblings and their pals explore new literary territory. Children's Literature Wiesner puts his considerable talents to work reworking the story of the three little pigs and the big bad wolf. Rather than allowing the wolf to eat the first little pig, he sends a three-dimensionally-drawn pig out of the boxed illustration that shows the wolf blowing down the pig's flimsy straw house. The next boxed illustration shows a perplexed wolf looking for his pig. The other pigs follow their brother outside the pages of the book, which we see strewn across a double-page spread, and begin to explore using a paper airplane folded from one of "their" book's pages. Crash-landing into a book of Mother Goose rhymes, the pigs escape into a story about a dragon and rescue the creature from the bemused-looking knight who has been sent to slay him. Back in their own story (and back to one dimension), the three pigs find that the dragon is an effective means of scaring off the big bad wolf. A clever tale that will keep kids poring over every detail. 2001, Clarion Books, . Ages 5 to 10. Reviewer: Cherri Jones
School Library Journal K-Gr 6-In Tuesday (Clarion, 1991), Wiesner demonstrated that pigs could fly. Here, he shows what happens when they take control of their story. In an L. Leslie Brooke sort of style (the illustrations are created through a combination of watercolor, gouache, colored inks, and pencils), the wolf comes a-knocking on the straw house. When he puffs, the pig gets blown "right out of the story." (The double spread contains four panels on a white background; the first two follow the familiar story line, but the pig falls out of the third frame, so in the fourth, the wolf looks quite perplexed.) So it goes until the pigs bump the story panels aside, fold one with the wolf on it into a paper airplane, and take to the air. Children will delight in the changing perspectives, the effect of the wolf's folded-paper body, and the whole notion of the interrupted narrative. Wiesner's luxurious use of white space with the textured pigs zooming in and out of view is fresh and funny. They wander through other stories-their bodies changing to take on the new style of illustration as they enter the pages-emerging with a dragon and the cat with a fiddle. The cat draws their attention to a panel with a brick house, and they all sit down to soup, while one of the pigs reconstructs the text. Witty dialogue and physical comedy abound in this inspired retelling of a familiar favorite.-Wendy Lukehart, Dauphin County Library, Harrisburg, PA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
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