Too Many Pigs and One Big Bad Wolf

Too Many Pigs and One Big Bad Wolf, a fractured fairy tale, takes the classic tale of the Three Little Pigs and twists it by adding characters, changing the setting, and removing details. There is no huffing, puffing, or blowing any houses down in this story. In fact, there are no houses at all! In this version, the words and illustrations both reflect a unique twist that involves math. While math and humour don’t often go hand-in-hand, author Davide Cali and illustrator Marianna Balducci successfully find ways to combine the two.

To begin, there are three little animated pigs strewn onto a rekenrek which is a math manipulative commonly used to teach number sense concepts in a concrete way. As the excerpt above demonstrates, this story within the story ends abruptly after just two lines and is followed by a disgruntled reader wanting more (the text representing the reader is a different colour and font than the rest of the words in the story). So, the next page tells a mini-story of four little pigs who get eaten by the wolf. Being only slightly longer and including only slightly more detail than the first, the reader is once again disgruntled and wants a longer story. The pattern is predictable and easy to recognize. Next there are five little pigs, six little pigs, seven little pigs…then the number pattern grows exponentially until eventually the story is told of one thousand pigs! By this point, the disgruntled reader in the story, and likely the real ones as well, are convinced that this will end the same way as the others and the wolf will eat all the little pigs again. However, this last version involves one final, funny twist…the wolf falls asleep because he is so full!

Too Many Pigs and One Big Bad Wolf is written and illustrated in a clever manner that has been well-thought-out. Cali and Balducci both play a role in making this picture book as laugh-out-loud funny as it is. The story, itself, is a fractured fairy tale, and the inclusion of the narration of a disgruntled reader who is reflective of the real audience’s thoughts and attitudes adds that much more humour.

Rekenreks often have coloured beads on them, and, throughout this story, Balducci uses each bead to represent the body of the little pigs. Each little pig gets its own unique design, from facial expressions and body language, to many even having props. The visual perspectives are also cleverly portrayed in the book. At the beginning, all that is shown is a zoomed-in version of the top row and the tips of the big bad wolf’s ears. As the story goes on and more little pigs are featured, more of the rekenrek rows are shown until eventually the audience gets to see the full standing structure and all the coloured beads on each row.