22. The Three Pigs

"Once upon a time there were three pigs who went out into the world to seek their fortune. The first pig decided to build a house of straw..."

sound familiar? I'm sure most people could finish the fairy tale with no problem. However, if you think that David Wiesner's 2001 version follows any traditional pattern...then you don't know David Wiesner. Wiesner loves a good postmodern book and, quite frankly, so do I. Without giving away too much of the surprises in this book, let's just say that it flips everything on its head.

One thing I love about this book is that there are multiple story lines going on-- in the beginning, you have the traditional text of the book that contradicts Wiesner's illustrations. 

Let me give you an example:

If you were to just read the text, it says that the wolf ate the pig up. If you look closely at the illustration, however, you see that the pig has escaped from the book, rescued by pig #1, much to the amazement of the wolf. So many things continue to pop up later on. Pigs breaking the frame, stepping out of the storybook, and becoming real. Characters occupying 'negative' space and taking charge of their story, refusing to sit idly by as the wolf eats them. The wolf stuck within his story, unable to emerge. So postmodern. So awesome.

The pigs later go on to visit other worlds of storybooks, changing in illustration style each time to match with the theme of the particular text they are inhabiting.  Wiesner uses mixed media to portray the intricacies of each genre, including watercolor, gouache, colored inks, pencil, and colored pencil. He is a master in this book of changing color palettes, texture, and style in each story the pigs enter. He also uses white space brilliantly, leaving multiple pages blank so as to get the feel for the pigs' movement through their world. And don't get me started on the pigs as characters themselves-- so clever and expressive (much of the story is later told through their dialogue)...I wanted to jump right in and fall into their world. 

I will most definitely be reading this to my students this year, maybe in a unit of fractured fairy tales, maybe to study about postmodernism, or maybe just for the fun of it. There's always some new detail I find every time I look at it, so maybe we'll have to read it a few times. Oh darn.