The Three Pigs by David Weisner

Wiesner, D. (2001). The three pigs. New York: Clarion.

This version starts out just like every other version of The Three Pigs, however the Wolf blows them right out of their story and into other settings and stories.  They gather up other story characters along the way and in the end bring them back into their story to defeat the Wolf.   It's a refreshing, fun and imaginative story reinvented.

Assignment # 1

Visual Element:  Composition

The Three Pigs by David Weisner is an excellent example of the use of composition or all of the visual elements.  This book is a beautiful example of line when the paper airplane feels like it takes them flying through the air and smack dab into another story.  Shape is used when showing the pages of books as the pigs are walking through a world outside of their story.  The use of color is brilliant they way that Mr. Weisner goes from The Three Pigs Story to the nursery rhyme to the black and white story with the dragon. This book also demonstrates texture so much so that you see the characters standing on the pages of their original book.

Evaluation Criteria:  Plot  

The plot in The Three Pigs by David Wiesner is a new twist on this old folktale. The story begins with the same plot as the original telling of The Three Little Pigs. In this version, the Wolf approaches each house, huffing and puffing but he blows each of the three pigs right out of the story. After that the pigs go exploring and encounter many elements of a book: pages, dialogue bubbles, characters from other books, etc. They run through a nursery rhyme and pull a few characters from other books back into their own story to save them and to help take care of their nemesis, “the Big, Bad Wolf.”  They rearrange the letters of their old story to create a new ending where they all “live happily ever after.”   

Author website:  http://www.davidwiesner.com/

Activity Guide:  https://www.teachingbooks.net/content/Wiesner_activity_guide.pdf

Activity Page:  http://www.vickiblackwell.com/lit/threepigs.html

Synthesizing with The Three Pigs:  http://reading.ecb.org/downloads/syn_lp_3Pigs.pdf