The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig

A talented team ingeniously up-ends the classic tale of the three little pigs, and the laugh-out-loud results begin with the opening illustration--a mother wolf lounges in bed, her hair in curlers and her toenails freshly polished, with her three fluffy, cuddly offspring gathered round. The wolf siblings, amply warned about the big bad pig, construct their first house of sturdy brick, a medium which resists the pig's huffing and puffing but is no match for his sledgehammer. Their abodes become progressively more fortress-like, and the pig's implements of destruction, correspondingly, grow heftier, until the wolves try another tack and weave a house of flowers. The fragrance so intoxicates and tames the pig that he and the wolves live together happily ever after. In his English-language debut (see note, p. 55), Trivizas laces the text with funny, clever touches, from an ensemble of animals who obligingly donate whatever building materials the wolves require, to the wolves' penultimate, armor-plated residence replete with a ``video entrance phone'' over which the pig can relay his formulaic threats. Oxenbury's watercolors capture the story's broad humor and add a wealth of supplementary details, with exquisite renderings of the wolves' comic temerity and the pig's bellicose stances. Among the wittiest fractured fairytales around. Ages 5-10. (Sept.)