Gladys Hunt on Pigs and Possibilities

Editor’s Note: Are there any animal lovers in the family? Gladys Hunt can recommend nine–count ’em, nine–recommendations for a classic story involving not one, but three, plucky porkers.

You Can Do Anything With a Pig     

Originally published on the Tumblon website, July 19, 2009

I counted nine different versions of the story of The Three Little Pigs in print today. There may be more that I don’t know about. I’m not sure whether the story needs all this help or whether the artists and storytellers are bursting with creativity and know the basis of a good tale when they hear one. Or whether they are short on original plots

The classic story begins this way:

            Once upon a time…there was an old sow with three little pigs, and as she had not enough to keep them, she sent them out to seek their fortune. The first that went off met a man with a bundle of straw, and said to him: “Please man, give me that straw to build me a house.” Which the man did, and the little pig built a house with it. Presently came along a wolf, and knocked at the door, and said: “Little pig, little pig, let me come in.” To which the pig answered,: “No, no, by the hair of my chiny chin chin…To which the wolf replied: ”Then I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house in.”

It’s a great kid’s story with repetitions of language and action and a dreadful villain, but not too scary. The tale gives way to a natural use of voice and drama, and has a proper ending in which the wolf has a fate that fits the crime. Kids have a keen sense of justice.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember what the original tale really was because subsequent retellings have delivered the story dozens of different ways—traditional, comic, simplified, elaborated, nice-ified, and whatever. What does a purist do? In this case, I think our choosing is based on whether the retold story is a well-told with good illustrations—with some of the remnants of the original story intact enough to give evidence of the story’s genius. Most are exceedingly clever and well-done.

I think James Marshall’s version is really fun for older primary children. The story remains intact, recognizable, but with humorous elements. The three pigs have evidently been given lots of leeway in expressing themselves. One wears a wild pair of trousers, another sleeps his life away, and the third is dressed like a professional man, wearing a suit. He talks like one, too. When he makes arrangements with brick-man, he says, “Capital idea, my good fellow!” and makes a date with the wolf by saying, “Would three o’clock suit you?” all the while laying plans to outwit the wolf—who wears a red and white striped suit. This evokes lots of giggles, even though the wolf is later served from the pot!

Eugene Trivizas reverses the story in his book In the Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig. The wolves carefully constructed houses are attacked by a rogue pig, but in the end the wolves build just the right kind of house and the three wolves and the pig settle down together. A peace-making book.

 David Yozar’s Yo. Hungry Wolf is a kind of “nursery rap” with adult-clever word-play. Glen Round’s Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf is just right for early primary grades. Jon Scieszka’s The True Story of the Three Little Pigs gives a story so different from the original that the reader has to know the original to get the humor of the wolf who makes excuses for what happened by saying he only came to borrow a cup of sugar to bake his granny a cake and when he sneezed the straw house fell down, leaving the pig inside “dead as a doornail…it seemed a shame to leave a perfectly good ham dinner lying there.”

Caldecott winner David Wiesner gives the story a post-modern twist in his The Three Pigs. The story begins with the straw house and quickly moves into another story which moves into another story which moves into another story. Finally, back on their original pages, the pigs settle down in the brick house, with the wolf still hanging round outside the window. Writing about this book, Joanna Long comments in The Horn Book that Wiesner demonstrates how far a good old story can take an artist inspired by its essential spirit.

What of the other three of the nine? Explore them yourself in a library or bookstore. All are called The Three Little Pigs, written by Barry Moser, Paul Galdone, and Margot Zemach, and all worth a look. What makes this story so endlessly relevant and popular? Is it that everyone is looking for a safe place—and there are wolves out there?

© Gladys M. Hunt 2008-10, reissued in 2022 with minor adjustments with permission of the Executor of the Literary Estate of Gladys M. Hunt (4194 Hilton SE, Lowell, MI 49331). Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Also at Redeemed Reader:

• We have our own list of little pigs! Many are mentioned in this post, but we found a few more . . .

We are participants in the Amazon LLC affiliate program; purchases you make through affiliate links like the one below may earn us a commission. Read more here.