This week my story time theme is wolves, and I am looking over some of the classic fairy tales. As I was searching around I found a lot of versions of The Three Little Pigs, so I thought it would be interesting to read the classic version and then read a couple of the retellings that have a little twist to them (like the one from Scieszka). But in all of the versions I read the first and the second little pigs get eaten by the wolf. I don’t know. I just can’t read a book to little children where the pigs get eaten. I mean, I am not against people reading these stories to children. I’m not going to go banning the books for goodness sakes. But, personally, I just can’t do it. Why is this? Is it because I was read these gory classics when I was a kid? Maybe I internalized it somehow. I don’t know. I just feel like I have a compulsion to protect the kids I read to. I mean, when you look at the story as it is told in Marshall’s classic it’s really awful! The three (anthropomorphized) pigs go out into the world to strike it on thier own. These are not pigs. Pigs don’t build houses for themselves. You know? And they are EATEN by a ravenous wolf. How scary is that?
All is not lost for me, though. I did find a non-gory version of the story here. I am telling this version of the story using a flannel board. And I think it does the job just fine. Moral intact. And there isn’t any eating of anybody.
