The Three Ninja Pigs
Written by Corey Rosen
Schwartz
Illustrated by Dan Santat
Scholastic Inc., 2012
35 pages
Fantasy
Who doesn’t like a good story about
ninjas? That is exactly why I picked up The
Three Ninja Pigs, a variation of a very familiar story. Everyone knows what happens in the original
story of The Three Little Pigs. The
first two pigs are too busy playing to build sturdy houses, so they are in big
trouble when the big, bad wolf comes around.
They run to the third pig’s house, and they are safe because the third
pig took the time to build a nice, sturdy house. They then teach the big, bad wolf a lesson,
and they are never bothered by him again.
How different will the story be with ninja pigs? Read The Three Ninja Pigs by Corey
Rosen Schwartz to find out!
Dan Santat did a great job illustrating
this book. He drew the illustrations
with Sumi brush work on rice paper, and he finished them in Adobe Photoshop. The illustrations make it evident that this
story is set in Japan. All of the characters
are wearing traditional Japanese/ninja clothing, and the setting looks like
what one would imagine when thinking about Japan. The arrangement and features of some of the
illustrations remind me of Japanese action movies and graphic novels/comics. I really enjoyed Santat’s illustrations, and
children would enjoy them too.
This book would be great to use in
classrooms ranging from second grade to fifth grade. Besides being part of the classroom library
for students to read on their own, this book could be used as a teaching tool
in a variety of ways. This book could be
used as a supplemental tool when studying Japanese culture. As previously stated, the characters in the
story are wearing traditional Japanese clothing, and a few Japanese words are
used during the story. These words are
actually defined in the glossary at the end of the book, so the teacher and
students would both have easy access to the definitions. The story could also be used as part of
poetry/rhyming lesson. The story is written
in rhyme, so the students could identify the rhyme scheme that is used. This story could also be used in a compare
and contrast lesson. The students could
compare and contrast this story with the original The Three Little Pigs,
identifying what is similar between the stories and what is different. Therefore, The Three Ninja Pigs by
Corey Rosen Schwartz would be a great addition to any elementary classroom
library.
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