The Three Pigs

Plot Summary
Wiesner’s The Three Pigs starts off as the story you know and love - three pigs building houses out of various materials, with a wolf lurking nearby. As soon as the first pig builds his house of straw, however, the wolf huffs, and puffs, and blows the pig right out of the story! The narration continues on and the wolf “ate the pig up” except… there’s no pig. The wolf goes on to the stick house, but the first pig beats him to it. The two pigs escape while the wolf continues to huff and puff and blow the pages out of order! All three pigs are together now, folding a page of the book into a paper airplane to fly around and explore. They land in a nursery rhyme and a dragon tale, bringing characters back to their story with them. The wolf is waiting, but when he huffs and puffs at the third house, it won’t come down, and not just because there’s a dragon inside!

Critical Analysis
This story is a unique spin on the classic three little pigs tale. The beginning is familiar to the reader, but the pigs quickly escape their story to explore a well-known nursery rhyme and other stories. The text changes accordingly, and the pigs bring other characters back to their own story, changing their fates in the process.
     As the pigs leave their own story, the characters are drawn outside of the margins. There are several nearly-blank pages that show the three pigs on a paper airplane, flying away from their story towards anything else. It’s easy to picture this happening in a child’s room as they explore the bookshelves. As the pigs step into the nursery rhyme, they change from their realistic-looking selves into pudgy, cute nursery variations. The text changes as well, from black to purple, from standard fonts to rounded, kid-friendly letters. As soon as the pigs step off the page, they return to themselves, even if that means their head looks realistic while their backs are still cartoons! The pigs transform into black and white line drawings when they visit the dragon’s tale, and the dragon turns colored and scaly when he returns with the pigs to their realm.
     Wiesner does a great job of showing how stories differ in illustration and text. This is a great book to take time to inspect, because there are fun elements to catch as you turn the pages. The blank pages don’t seem empty because the pigs are flying across it on their paper plane, and Wiesner is very skilled with making his drawings look 3D. The pigs are flat when they’re in stories, but as they travel around, they look like they’re outside of the book entirely, looking in with you.

Personal Response
I love how the cover to this book is so misleading - it looks like a tame traditional story because the pigs are drawn so realistically. Then you get the story started and it’s so fun and off the wall! I found it was a hard book to read aloud, because the illustrations demand so much close attention. It’s also a little difficult to keep different voices straight with the dialogue bubbles contrasting with the narration. It’s a great solo read, though, because readers can go at their own pace. I love how the pigs adapt to the different types of stories they stumble into, and I love that Wiesner shows there are many other stories available that the pigs bypass when returning to their own. I think that really hands the story over so the reader can continue it in their own imagination.

Reviews & Awards
David Wiesner won a Caldecott Medal for this book, and has won the award thrice total! Publishers Weekly raved about the book: “Wiesner's brilliant use of white space and perspective (as the pigs fly to the upper right-hand corner of a spread on their makeshift plane, or as one pig's snout dominates a full page) evokes a feeling that the characters can navigate endless possibilities--and that the range of story itself is limitless.” The Horn Book chimes in: “Wiesner may not be the first to thumb his nose at picture-book design rules and storytelling techniques, but he puts his own distinct print on this ambitious endeavor. There are lots of teaching opportunities to be mined here—or you can just dig into the creative possibilities of unconventionality.”

  Connections & Activities
Readers can identify the other stories and nursery rhymes that serve as settings in this book, then brainstorm about where else the pigs could visit. Many fairy tales and nursery rhymes star pigs, so they’ll have a wide selection! Once they pick a different story or two, they can draw the three pigs in a a scene, in the style of the original illustrator.

Read it for yourself!
Wiesner, David. 2001. The Three Pigs. New York: Clarion Books. ISBN 9780618007011

Anansi and the Magic Stick

Plot Summary
Anansi the spider is always getting into mischief. This time, he’s too lazy to do any work. While his neighbors clean their houses and take care of their gardens, Anansi sleeps. After the neighbors badmouth Anansi, he leaves to find a more peaceful place to sleep think! He sees the Hyena is also sleeping, but his house and garden look wonderful. Anansi hides to find out Hyena’s secret. Soon enough, Hyena wakes up and says the magic words: “Hocus-pocus, Magic Stick. Sweep this dust up. Quick, quick, quick!” The stick does as it’s told, and as soon as Hyena goes inside, Anansi runs home with the stick. He has it clean up his house and garden, but falls asleep as the stick is watering. Anansi told the stick “Don’t stop!” and never woke up to speak the magic words, so the garden becomes flooded. The water becomes a stream, then a river, and all of the neighborhood is floating away. By the time Anansi wakes up, the flood is out of control, and he can’t remember the magic words! Will he be able to stop the water? More importantly, will Anansi ever learn his lesson?

Critical Analysis
Every page of this book is beautifully illustrated, including the end papers and the author’s pictures! The drawings seem somewhat traditional: the animals are anthropomorphized, but they are portrayed realistically, instead of as cartoon characters. Even though they look realistic, the animals are vividly colored and have a lot of personality shining through. “Steven’s comic creatures with their surprised expressions add kid appeal,” says Publishers Weekly.
     Illustrations cover nearly every page, with small blocks of text that encourage exploration of the art in between sentences. The sentences themselves look artistic, with creative spacing across pages, and bold, larger fonts to stress certain things, like when the animals are “working working working” and how the river was “a stream, then a flood, then a mighty river.”
     The repetition of the Magic Stick’s rhyme, and the gibberish quality of the spell to make it stop, makes this a fun story to read aloud. This playfulness with the fonts, along with the bright illustrations, is a nice spin on a traditional tale, updating it for younger children to enjoy it now, while still learning lessons along with, er… thanks to Anansi.

Personal Response
I remember loving traditional tales as a child because I always thought the lesson learned was fun (I know, I know - I’m a nerd!). When I had to read it this time, however, I found I was almost dreading it, just because it seemed, well, a little boring. The cover seemed kind of plain, and I had just read a silly book, The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs. I was relieved to open the book and find such colorful illustrations, and it seemed more appealing since the drawings covered the majority of every page. I think illustrations are important for traditional tales, because the tales are so wonderful to read aloud and be heard - that means having interesting stuff to look at will pull the children in to the story even more. I also think the silliness of the spells to start and stop the Magic Stick are fun to read aloud, especially when the reader is expressive and stumbles over the forgotten spell with Anansi towards the end. The reader can also speak the animals’ lines in what their voices would sound like, with Hyena’s laugh and Lion’s roar.

Reviews & Awards
Kirkus Reviews says, “Children will delight in Anasi’s escapades as he annoys his neighbors and learns how to control the stick. This is [Kimmel and Stevens’s] fourth Anansi collaboration; has the tricky spider learned his lesson this time? Let's hope not-his stories are too amusing.”
     ”This tale has a more traditional ring to it than Kimmel and Stevens’s Anansi and the Talking Melon, but whimsical illustrations add a modern-day appearance. The art has a softer focus than in Talking Melon but the same bright colors fill the pages, and the whole adds up to an enjoyable offering that is clever, funny, surprising, and traditional all at once.” from School Library Journal.

Connections & Activities
Read other Anansi books by Eric A. Kimmel and illustrated by Janet Stevens:
Anansi and the Moss-Covered Rock ISBN 9780823407989
Anansi and the Talking Melon ISBN 9780823411672
Anansi Goes Fishing ISBN 9780823410224
Anansi’s Party Time ISBN 9780823422418

Read it for yourself!
Kimmel, Eric A. 2001. Anansi and the Magic Stick. Ill. by Janet Stevens. New York: Holiday House, Inc. 9780823414437