The Three Little Pigs - Story and Play product reviews

My daughter received a copy of this book and we have had a lot of fun with it. The first half of the book is the three little pigs story and the second half a 'play' version that can be done with family or with friends. She intends to take her copy to school to share with her class.

The book is an adaptation of the original, with a slightly more humorous look at the tale. The pigs do not all survive as is expected, and their reasons for leaving home and going out in the big wide world and indeed a funny take on the original. The three little pigs start off living at home with mum, but as the story unfolds it shows that they take everything, especially mum, for granted...a lot like many children today lol and eventually mum has had enough. The pigs end up going it alone and mum ends up on a world cruise haha The pigs are left to fend for themselves, with little money and what would seem even less wits.

My 6yr old enjoyed this take on the original, listening quietly without much questioning. More intrigued by the story line I think. She liked the artwork in the book and then was very keen to do the play with the family. The play was fun, easy to put together and gave us a great family night without TV...we all had fun and their were many memories and lots of laughs made. Best of all, its a play that could happily be redone over and over again. The price is not to bad either I think and I would happily pay the suggested price for the book. I also think it would make a great gift too.

I was really excited to read the Three Little Pigs book by Roger Hall. I love Roger Hall's works and have seen a couple of his plays as well as read some of them. The book says it is a modern re-telling, so I was interested to see what he had done with this classic.

This story is much closer to the tale of my childhood and is way less PC than other modern re-tellings. I shared it with my daughter and she enjoyed the tale a lot. She was a bit quiet where the sillier pigs met their fate. But otherwise she was engaged and happy listening to the tale.

Errol McLeary's illustrations are cute and cartoony. They aren't brightly coloured at all, but they are fun. I loved the animals in clothing, as did my daughter. The wolf looks very nice in his cheap suit.

At almost $20 this book is good value. You get a good read of a bedtime story. It is quite wordy, but its well written. Then in the back you have the play as well. Reading through that, you have some differences to the story, which are fun to note. I can't see myself reading this nightly due to the length of it, but it's still a good read and well worth the time.

As soon as I saw this adaptation of The Three Little Pigs was written by Roger Hall I knew it had to be hilarious. I wasn't disappointed. It was loosely based on the traditional story I grew up with but there has been so much added to it. There is an adult level of humour which meant the children looked at me funny as I laughed at lines they didn't understand. I was pleased to see that this adaptation still contained the famous lines we all know off by heart.

My three and four year olds enjoyed the story but it was at the limit of their attention span. It would have been enjoyed more by five to seven year olds due to the length and the amount of words on each page. The bold illustrations definitely helped the younger ones to follow the story.

The play was a great bonus. I felt the book would have been good value just with the story. My children were too young to do the play but I would have used it with my junior class had this been out when I was a classroom teacher. The characters's parts are all colour coded which makes it easy for children to follow. It also has a list of useful props for each scene. This would make putting on the play an easy exercise.

Thank you to KIWIreviews and Scholastic for providing another great book for me and my home-based carekids to review. This book has been very popular that I have been rewarding good behaviour by letting the child have The Three Little Pigs to read next.