How the Big Bad Wolf Got His Comeuppance

K-Gr 2–Geisert’s famous pigs are back, they walk upright, and life has not been good to them. “After a particularly miserable dinner,” their mother explains that the time had come for the three little pigs to go out into the world to seek their fortunes. Cut to the wolf, coming upon the first pig’s harmless-looking shrub home, and his attempt to blow it down. But that pig, and its siblings, have each created Rube Goldberg defenses that meet the wolf squarely with one disaster after another, until he goes home hungry and they return to their mother’s home for pizza. Geisert’s familiar art, produced from copperplate etchings that were printed by hand and then watercolored, is a radiant accompaniment to this tale. But woe to readers with any sort of inner logic and an unwillingness to pass over critical missing details. The three little pigs each exert tremendous effort and likely expense on their machinery to thwart the wolf’s well-chronicled attempts to eat them. How did they accomplish that? Once home, do they no longer require fortunes?