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Common Sense Note

The wolf's delightfully outrageous story is a surefire attention-grabber, while the silly yet radiant artwork adds to the book's appeal.

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Common Sense Review

Reviewed By: Peter Lewis

This send-up of the well-known story also makes fun of the tendency to clean up classic fairy tales to suit modern tastes. Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith go over the top to give this parody the same kind of shock value as the fairy tales of old.

The wolf's wisecracking set off gales of laughter from a library full of six-year-olds--there is also a life lesson being taught: namely, don't be so quick to judge behavior. The book is a good introduction to the playfulness of parody, how a seemingly carefree laugh-along can coexist with deeper ideas.

The writer and the illustrator might well have been separated at birth, so perfectly do they fill any holes that may be missing from either text or artwork. Scieszka's verbal pizzazz, combined with Smith's expressionist paintings, leave no gaps to be filled.

Another Scieszka-Smith success story in the same vein is The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, and for juicy nonsense for middle graders, try Daniel Pinkwater's Fat Men From Space.

From The Book

I don't know how this whole Big Bad Wolf thing got started, but it's all wrong. Maybe it's because of our diet. Hey, it's not my fault wolves eat cute little animals like bunnies and sheep and pigs. That's just the way we are. If cheeseburgers were cute, folks would probably think you were Big and Bad, too.

Plot Summary:

Don't believe everything you read! In this, the wolf's cockamamie version of the "Three Little Pigs," he goes to the first pig to borrow a cup of sugar and sneezes hard--blowing the house down is just an accident. He eats the pigs--sure, because wasting food is wrong--in this rollicking send-up of the classic fairy tale.

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