You know the story of the three little pigs. The first pig built a house out of straw, and the big bad wolf huffed and puffed and blew.... the first little pig right out of the book?
Okay, so that's not the story you know. The first little pig dashes through the blank space between story panels to help his brothers escape the big bad wolf. Newly freed, the three (and now three-dimensional) pigs travel into and out of the tales they find around them in this book-hopping mixed-media meta-story.
The "fourth wall" is a concept from theatre that refers to the invisible wall between audience and story. David Wiesner's The Three Pigs cheekily tears down the fourth wall in a way that will make kids giggle. Besides roughing up conventional literary standards, the book also takes on illustration itself, leaving a whole page nearly blank, among other ways of exploring the space between the covers. While a bit thin on plot, it's heavy in imagination, and will get kids thinking about why stories are written and illustrated the way they are.
Review by Lauren Shearer
Lauren Shearer writes words for fun and profit. She also makes films, but everyone knows you can't make a profit doing that. Her other hobby is consistently volunteering way too much of her time. You can read more of her reviews
here.
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