I love David Wiesner’s books and Three Pigs is no exception. Weisner is one of those children’s book authors that works in the visual language of comics. But for some reason, I don’t hear anything about him in the usual comic sites I visit. Maybe they think he’s classified as a “children’s book illustrator.” I don’t know.
Well, I managed to grab a second hand copy of this Caldecott winning book at Book Sale the other day.
The Three Pigs, despite beginning the same way as the story of The Three Little Pigs veers off at the wolf’s first huff and puff.
What follows is a little fourth wall breaking and little metatextual exercise. It isn’t as complicated as I make it sound, but that is what happens.
Wiesner creates a book where the Three Pigs are knowingly characters in a story. He uses different art styles for different story segments. The simpler, cartoony style is reserved for those sequences that exist in book space while he renders the pigs as hyper-real for those segments where the pigs escape into the limbo between books.
It’s all good stuff.
So if you love children’s books and you happen to be a comic fan. David Wiesner’s works should always be on your list of must buys. 🙂
Hey Oso! 