Variations on Traditional Literature

I chose to find variations on the traditional story of The Three Little Pigs. The three books I selected were The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig by Eugene Trivizas, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka, and The Three Pigs by David Weisner.

Trivizas’ The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig is a character swap on the traditional three little pigs story. The three little wolves are building their houses all together out of much sturdier materials than in the traditional tale. With that element of this story, I would discuss teamwork with my students and how two heads (and three) are better than one. Any version of the three little pigs has to have good character lessons built in. There is always a bully character in the story and that spins off to how my students can handle bullies in their lives. I was very surprised by the ending of this story though. After building three strong houses and having the pig destroy them all, the wolves build a house of flowers. Smelling the flowers changes the pig’s heart. This is a great place to teach about plot twists, and this particular plot twist lends itself to teaching about redemption and how even the most unlikely of people can turn over a new leaf and start anew.

Scieszka ‘s The True Story of the Three Little Pigs is also a story where the wolf is the protagonist and the “good guy.” The wolf is telling the story of how he had a cold and was out looking for a cup of sugar to bake his granny a birthday cake. He inadvertently blows down the houses and eats the pigs, and lands himself in jail. I would absolutely use this book to teach my students about point of view. This story is very similar to the traditional tale, except from the wolf’s point of view. For example, in original stories the evil wolf blows the houses down and eats the pigs. In Scieszka’s version the wolf accidently blows the houses down and eats the pigs because they were already dead. In either case the facts are the same. What changes is whose side you take.  I could also use a Venn diagram to compare this story to the traditional story.

I think that the three little wolves story is a more modern twist on the original version. Nowadays we like there to be neat and tidy happy endings where the bad guy can choose to be good after all. In The True Story, the wolf still ends up in trouble and two of the pigs are still dead. So the way the two versions end the story is very different from each other.

The Three Pigs by David Weisner is a very different take on the tale. The basic story begins the same, but then as you go along, Weisner starts messing with the fourth wall between the audience and the characters. The pigs find themselves coming out of the pages of their story and into the pages of other stories. The art in this book is beautiful and the book has won the Caldecott Medal. There are also different illustration styles for each story the pigs step into. This book is the most different of all three versions of The Three Little Pigs I read. After just the first page, the direction of the story completely changes. I think that this would not be a good book to compare and contrast to the original story. It would also be difficult to teach story elements with this book because the story is so fractured and doesn’t follow a typical arc. But it is a great book to read just for fun.

I find it interesting that there are so many stories (two of the three I selected) that portray the wolf not as the “bad guy.” This may have something to do with the fact that this story has been around for so long that authors have had time to do lots of different things with it. You can only tell the same story so many times before nobody really pays attention to it anymore. Also, the wolf is so often stuck in a stereotype of being the bad guy in fairy tales. It is good to get kids (and adults) thinking outside the box when it comes to characters and people they meet.