"The True Story of The Three Little Pigs", by A. Wolf (As Told To Jon Scieszka) is one of my favorite "fractured" fairy tales. This story was published in 1989 and has been very popular with children for over 20 years.
You may think you know the story of The Three Little Pigs but there are two sides to every story. The story begins with A. Wolf explaining that the real story is about a sneeze and a cup of sugar. He was making a birthday cake for his dear old granny and ran out of sugar. He also happened to have a terrible sneezing cold.
Was The Wolf Really Big And Bad?
Mr. Wolf walked down the street to borrow a cup of sugar from his neighbor. The neighbor happened to be a pig. The pig also happened to have a house made of straw.
Mr. Wolf knocked on the door but the pig did not answer. Unfortunately, the wolf felt a sneeze coming on. He huffed and snuffed and sneezed a great sneeze. The whole darn house fell down and the little pig was dead. The wolf did not want to let a perfectly good ham go to waste, so he ate the pig for dinner.
Mr. Wolf had a similar experience at another neighbor's house. He finally came to a brick house and knocked on the door. The pig was rude and insulted the wolf's granny. When the cops arrived, the wolf was huffing and puffing and sneezing and making a real scene.
The story ends with the wolf behind behind bars and a police officer (a pig, of course) was guarding his cell. He had been framed.
My Thoughts
I read this book aloud many times when I worked as an elementary school librarian. The children could hear this same story over and over again...they always loved it.
The wolf is so convincing that he almost convinces the readers that he really was framed and it was all an accident. This is a perfect book for a "point-of-view" lesson. It was fun to ask the children to compare the original "Story of the Three Little Pigs" with this book. The final question was always, "Who do you believe and why?"
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