Retro Friday Review is a weekly meme hosted by Angieville. This focuses on classics, out of print books or just old favorites that don’t get the attention they deserve. This Friday’s review is:
The True Story of the 3 Little PigsFirst Published: 1989
“Did the story of the three little pigs ever seem slightly biased to you? All that huffing and puffing--could one wolf really be so unequivocally evil? Finally, we get to hear the rest of the story straight from the wolf's mouth. As Alexander T. Wolf explains it, the whole Big Bad Wolf thing was just a big misunderstanding. Al Wolf was minding his own business, making his granny a cake, when he realized he was out of a key ingredient. He innocently went from house to house to house (one made of straw, one of sticks, and one of bricks) asking to borrow a cup of sugar. Could he help it if he had a bad cold, causing him to sneeze gigantic, gale-force sneezes? Could he help it if pigs these days use shabby construction materials? And after the pigs had been ever-so-accidentally killed, well, who can blame him for having a snack?” -GoodReads
I decided for today’s RFR I would chose a childhood favorite. I was probably in third or fourth grade when I first read this book. It was my first experience reading a fairy tale re-imagining and I’ve been hooked ever since. I grew up loving fairy tales and for some reason I never really pictured the stories other than how they had always been presented. So, when I saw this book at a friend’s house I was extremely excited to see the story told from the wolf’s perspective. The story is linked closely with the original with all the huffing and puffing, as well as the three different kinds of houses, which gives it a lot of credibility. Personally, I think the pigs we’re being a little oversensitive and were stereotyping poor Mr. Wolf. I loved the art work and think this is a perfect edition in any child’s library!
Ha! I love that this was your first fairy tale re-imagining. Awesome.
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