The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs!

Scieszka, J. The true story of the 3 little pigs. By A. Wolf. (1989) New York. Viking Penguin

I'm not going to lie, I have never heard or read this story and after reading it I am quite ashamed of myself and the fact that I have been living in under a literacy deprived rocked.  Being a school teacher you always get to hear one side of every story.  Little Johnny likes to explain why he couldn't do his homework, little Jill talks about why she pushed Joe into the mud.  Finding out the other side of the story is the important part when developing a thought about what truly happened.  This book provides the other side to the classic three pigs tale and in my opinion the poor wolf was played as the scape goat by those cruel pigs. 

All jokes aside this is truly a great book for students.  Who hasn't heard the story of the three little pigs and the big bad wolf?  I read this book to my first graders earlier this week and they were enamoured with the book and the illustrations.  A few of my students recognized the part of the 3 Little Pigs before I read the text in this book.  They would yell out, "hey that is when the wolf huffed and puffed and blew down the straw house."  I love the visual images that this book uses, the book cover appears to be a newspaper and could even pass for an E! True Hollywood Story. 

Class activities for this book would be: Open-Response question: Whose story do you believe: the wolf or the pigs? Explain your answer.  Class discussion:  What leads you to believe the wolf is lying? What key words does he mention that leads you to believe he is lying?