*Starred Review*
Ages 6-9. Jon Scieszka's The True Story of the Three LittlePigs (1989) turned the favorite porkers' story upside-down byallowing the grossly misjudged wolf to tell his side of the story.Wiesner's latest is a post-modern fantasy for young readers thattakes Scieszka's fragmentation a step further: it not only breaksapart and deliciously reinvents the pigs' tale, it invites readersto step beyond the boundaries of story and picture bookaltogether.

 
Even the book's younger readers will understand the distinctivevisual code. As the pigs enter the confines of a storybook page,they conform to that book's illustrative style, appearing asnursery-rhyme friezes or comic-book line drawings. When the pigsemerge from the storybook pages into the meta-landscape, theyappear photographically clear and crisp, with shadows and threedimensions. Wiesner's (Tuesday) brilliant use of white space andperspective (as the pigs fly to the upper right-hand corner of aspread on their makeshift plane, or as one pig's snout dominates afull page) evokes a feeling that the characters can navigateendless possibilities--and that the range of story itself islimitless. Ages 5-up.

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