The 3 Little Dassies - Jan Brett

G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2010
$17.99
32 pages
Rating: 4
Endpapers: woven basketweave with bugs, butterflies, moths...

Yes, it's a cute fractured fairy tale. Instead of three pigs it's three cute creatures native to the Namib Desert in southern Africa. Excellent for comparing and contrasting, retelling. But it's Jan Brett's signature illustrations that really captivate. How does she draw like this?

Incorporating native fabrics, flora, and fauna, one barely needs the words at all. The clever illustrations tell the whole story. make sure to examine them carefully!

The Three Pigs - David Wiesner

2002 Caldecott Award
Published: 2001
Rating: 4
$16.00
Endpapers: light brown

We start out with the well-known tale of the three little piga - but as the wolf starts to blow the house of bricks, the pigs all escape from the page of the book and some of the pages fall out! Deciding to explore, they turn one of the pages into a paper airplane, climb on to it, and take off --- and crash. They run through other fairy tales, helping a dragon who's about to be slayed, escape. He joins them in their search for home until they find the pages and climb back inside. Ahh! The story is now able to end, and when the wolf tries to blow the brick house in, he encounters the dragon!

Cute pigs. Cute story.

The Three Swingin' Pigs - Vicky Rubin

Illustrator: Rhode Montijo
For: Kids
Published: 2007
Rating: Fun
Endpapers: Dark Orange

I am always on the lookout for fractured fairy tales - someday I'm going to write a curriculum using them. I stumble on them every once in awhile, as I did a week ago at the library - this was standing up on a shelf above the picutre books. Dark reds and purples and oranges are used in fully illustrated, edge-to-edge acrylic drawings. Much of the easy-to-read font is white on the dark illustration. Its fun to look at, and it's fun to read. It's jazzy.

Yup, a jazz version of the three little pigs:

Satch played sax. Wee-wee-wee-wee!
Mo played bass. Doont-doont-dun-duhhh!
And Ella sang. Scat-scooby-dooby, scat-scooby-dooby, skit-scat-skedoodle, shoooo!

You can hear the music as your read. It reads aloud really well, and I can picture kids taking parts.

...in the Hogland Woods there lived a wolf, and he was baaaaaaaad. On a typicl wolf day, he ate up six coach mice, sate down on other people's tffets, and went around in the most unwolflike of getups. A real bad cat.

It turns out that Wolfie joins the pigs and thye begin a band: 3 Swingin' Pigs and Wolfie. Great fun. Great words. Great music. A cool choral reading (one of my favorite things).