I’m sure you’ve figured out by now that I love funny picture books, and that I’m a sucker for a spoof. “The True Story of the Three Little Pigs” is just hilarious and it’s my kind of book.
As it turns out, the poor wolf has been maligned all these years. We have always perceived him to be the bad guy, the carnivore, the slobbery, vicious beast who only wants to mangle and destroy. But we’ve never heard the story from the wolf’s perspective – and now we have that unique chance.
First of all, the wolf would like to call into question this whole “big, bad” persona. It’s not his fault that wolves eat smaller animals. It’s not his fault that those animals are cute, either. That’s just how it is.
But he digresses – what he would really like to discuss is the real story of what happened with those pigs, and it all boils down to a cup of sugar and a sneeze.
He was making a birthday cake for his granny, and he had a terrible cold. While he was measuring out the ingredients, he discovered that he was out of sugar.
So he walked down the road to his neighbor’s house to borrow a cup of sugar. His neighbor was a pig who had built his house out of straw. The wolf thought that was very odd, but, he wasn’t one to judge.
When he knocked on the door, he thought the house was empty. But then a huge sneeze overtook him, and it blew the house down. Well, it was only made of straw, to begin with. Then he saw the pig, laying in the middle of the house, dead as a doornail. And it would be silly to leave a nice ham dinner there to rot, so he ate it up.
The wolf still didn’t have his cup of sugar, so he went on down the road until he came to a house of sticks. And another sneeze, out of control, burst forth, and the house fell down. It really wasn’t his fault.
But he still didn’t have any sugar. So he continued on his way until he came to the house of brick. That pig wouldn’t give him any sugar, and he said the wolf’s granny could go sit on a pin. Well, no one talks about Granny that way! The wolf lost his temper just as the police pulled up.
When the newspapers got ahold of the story, they couldn’t believe the whole thing had been over a cup of sugar, so they embellished the story with the “huffing and puffing.” He was journalistically framed.
But he still needs a cup of sugar.
(This book was published in 1989 by Puffin Books and was illustrated by Lane Smith.)
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