Thursday, April 2, 2015

Mod 9: Where's the Big Bad Wolf by Eileen Christelow

Summary:
Officer Doggity is constantly having to stop the Big Bad Wolf (BBW) from trying to eat the other animals. Every time he catches BBW in the act BBW promises he will be good from now on. One Night Doggity hears a puffing and huffing and the air is filled with straw, and the sounds of squealing pigs can be heard. When doggity investigates a strange sheep calling herself Esmeralda is pulling the pigs from the straw. She claims to have saved them. The old cows next door say they warned to pigs not to use straw and doggity searches for the wolf. He finds BBW at home sick, but doggity knows somethings is up!
The next day Esmeralda instructs the pigs to build a new house of sticks. The cows warn that it is still too flimsey but the Pigs don’t listen. That night Doggity stakes out the pigs new house to watch for the wolf, only Esmeralda is seen walking about, and Doggity falls asleep. A huffing wakes him up and Doggity finds the pigs again in their destroyed house and Esmeralda helping them up. The cows take the pigs in that night and read them the story of the 3 little pigs.
Doggity finds the wolf at the hospital, but still knows this is not right. The next house the pigs build from bricks, which Esmeralda is not happy about. The cows and Doggity stake out the new house when it is done and they hear a huffing a puffing, but the house stands strong. Doggity spots Esmeralda running away and followers her until she climbs into the hospital window, and Doggity realizes it was the wolf in sheep’s clothing. The wolf is arrested and promises to be good again. The next day a strange horse is in town giving the pigs bad gardening advice.

Christelow, E. (2002). Where's the big bad wolf? New York, NY: Clarion Books.

My Impressions:
A fun little story with a mystery that I solved with the first picture of the “sheep” who looked like a wolf with a wool around his head. I am unsure as to whether or not small children would be able to figure it out so quickly, but I have a feeling that some would. It could add to the fun though if reading to a group of children and some of them try to identify the wolf but a clever reader could downplay it maybe.

Reviews:
Gr 1-2-A determined Detective Doggedly pursues the elusive BBW (Big Bad Wolf) in a delicious parody of the traditional tale. Three dim-witted and naive pigs, a wolf with a taste for unusual costuming, and three sharp-eyed residents of the nearby "Home for Elderly Cows" create a mystery worthy of the slightly befuddled detective: who is destroying the pigs' houses, when the wolf is currently hospitalized with mysterious flulike symptoms? Doggedly catches the culprit, but one doubts that this "egg-snatching, pie-pinching, chicken-chasing, pig-poaching" villain is ready to change his habits when released. Christelow's pen-and-ink and gouache cartoons show sticks and straw flying across pages, the not-too-bright protagonist, and a hilarious wolf in sheep's clothing. Characters comment on all the goings-on in dialogue balloons that add to the fun and humor. Pair this book with Jon Scieszka's True Story of the Three Little Pigs (Viking, 1989), another choice for lovers of fractured tales.-Mary Elam, Forman Elementary School, Plano, TX (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.”

[Review of Where's the big bad wolf? by E. Christelow] (2002). School library journal. Retrieved from http://libproxy.library.unt.edu:2929/DetailedView.aspx?hreciid=|10737822|7528314&mc=USA#

Usage in a Library Setting:

This could be used to spark ideas in children to come up with other common fairytales they know and think of different ways to tell the story which they could ten draw or maybe go around telling their stories.

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