The Three Little Pigs

One could spend the better part of a day just tracking down and reading the apparently countless number of versions of The Three Little Pigs that are out there. To get a sense of how many there are, just try a search at amazon.com sometime or browse your local children's bookstore.

My sense is that there are three main categories of these books: the traditional story, postmodern revisions, and regional variations. For the traditional story, check out the Little Golden Book edition or the Disney board book (pictured left). Postmodern twists on the story include Jon Scieszka's The True Story of the Three Little Pigs and Barry Moser's version, complete with tongue-in-cheek humor and innuendo for the adults stuck reading the story to their little ones. The regional variations include titles like Three Little Cajun Pigs, the bilingual Los Tres Cerditos, and The Three Little Javelinas. In case you are curious, I only own a couple versions, including my favorite, David Weisner's innovative, deconstructionist, Caldecott-award-winning The Three Pigs (pictured above), described here in an interview at his publisher's website.

Ian Falconer's Olivia

The most popular pig in children's literature in this decade has to be Olivia, Ian Falconer's strong-willed heroine of eight books. My two favorites are Olivia Saves the Circus (2001) and Olivia Starts a Band (2006). According to a 2003 article by Bob Minzesheimer in USA Today, Falconer has no good answer for why he chose a pig: "I have no idea. There seems to be a lot of pigs and ducks in kids' books. Pigs are shaped like little kids. Their bodies are smaller than their heads. Pigs are supposed to be intelligent, smarter than dogs, but they're a bit awkward. Their trotters are like little kids' arms that don't work very well yet."

The U.S. Postal Service included Olivia in a 2006 stamp series of Favorite Children's Book Animals (above). Note that two pigs made the cut, Olivia, and Wilbur from E.B. White's Charlotte's Web.

You can find a conversation with Falconer about his creation here on the Simon & Schuster site.

Arnold Lobel's Pigericks

Arnold Lobel's The Book of Pigericks (1983) contains 38 limericks about pigs, framed between two semi-autobiographical limericks about an old pig with a pen who looks surprisingly like a porcine version of Arnold Lobel himself (see the cover to the right). The limericks themselves are silly, perfect for the 4-8 year olds who are the target audience. For example:

There was a rich pig from Palm Springs
Who had passions for bracelets and rings.
He displayed his collection
Around his midsection
By means of strong wires and strings.

Yet another find in my attack on the CSULB Children's Collection.

Lewis Carroll's "The Pig-Tale"

California State University Long Beach has an outstanding children's literature collection, where I've been going through lots and lots of pig-related books. One pleasant surprise was the discovery of Leonard B. Lubin's 1975 adaptation of Lewis Carroll's "The Pig-Tale," which originally appeared in Sylvie and Bruno (full text here) in 1889. It concerns a pig who is grief-stricken because he cannot jump. A frog comes by and offers to teach the pig how to jump for a fee. The frog jumps easily onto an old water pump, and urges the pig to "bend your knees and take a hop." The result:

Uprose that Pig, and rushed, full whack,
Against the ruined Pump:
Rolled over like an empty sack,
And settled down upon his back,
While all his bones at once went 'Crack!'
It was a fatal jump.

The Frog winds up in a dismal mood, of course, because he would never get his fee.

Lubin's illustrations are quite charming, with the animals in formal Victorian-era costumes. The story of the pig is interspersed with verses about little birds, also nicely illustrated, if perhaps a bit too surreal and fantastic for some. I couldn't find any examples of Lubin's work on "The Pig-Tale," so y'all get an image of Lewis Carroll instead. Sorry.

All Pigs Are Beautiful

Dick King-Smith has also written a children's book about the characteristics and habits of pigs called All Pigs Are Beautiful (1993). It is illustrated by Anita Jeram and is available in the U.S. from Candlewick Press. As the frontispiece notes, "There are little pigs and big pigs, pigs with long snouts and pigs with short snouts, pigs with ears that stick up and pigs with ears that flop down. But all pigs are beautiful." Several pages of the book, ideal for ages three and up, by the way, are dedicated to the story of King-Smith's beloved pig Monty. In a tacit critique of industrial agriculture, King-Smith observes that "the luckiest pigs, like Monty, live outside."

I'll be at a meeting starting tomorrow in New Orleans. I'm looking forward to getting back to a place I used to live, albeit briefly. I'll be posting again next week about my trip to Cochon and the opening of my friend David Rae Morris' exhibition at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art. So see you next week. Laissez les bon temps roulez!

A "Very Small Animal" Named Piglet

Piglet, one of the most famous fictional pigs in children's literature, made his debut in A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh in 1926. This "Very Small Animal" lived in house in a large beech-tree with an old, broken sign next to it reading TRESPASSERS W. Throughout these stories, illustrated by Ernest H. Shepard, Piglet is easily frightened, but nevertheless continues to try to be courageous. My favorite adventure of Piglet's in the original book involved his being trapped in his tree during a flood. As he notes, "It's a little Anxious to be a Very Small Animal Entirely Surrounded by Water."

The first of the Disney adaptations of Winnie-the-Pooh appeared in 1966. Piglet was absent, replaced by Gopher, which, according to director Wolfgang Reitherman, was believed to have a "folksy, all-American, grass-roots image." After protests by fans, Piglet was reintroduced in 1968's Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day. Disney still makes film and television programs with Pooh and Piglet, most recently Piglet's Big Movie (2003). There is a lot of Piglet merchandise out there, unsurprisingly. You can get a sense of the ongoing legal battle between the Milne family and Disney from a BBC article here.

Speaking of children's toys, I still have my childhood Steiff bear, identical to the growler model that the real Christopher Robin Milne had (see picture; Piglet is the very small animal in the middle, to the left of the stack of books). I too called my bear Pooh, although it hasn't survived in nearly as nice shape as Milne's. You can see the original toys at the New York Public Library, by the way. I must have seen the Disney films in the late 1960s, but I've largely forgotten them. I certainly prefer the original look of Ernest Shepard's Piglet and his friends.

The Little Pig's Ramble From Home

The San Francisco Public Library has an excellent collection of children's books, some of which are discussed on-line in an essay by Ruth McGurk (here). In a section in her essay on the moral lessons imparted by children's literature, McGurk uses The Little Pig's Ramble from Home (ca. 1850) as an example of the kind of children's book that urges youth not to put on airs. In this text and illustration, Jack Pig wears a wig and a top hat but receives his comeuppance when he discovers how pigs are "dressed" at the butcher's. A cautionary tale indeed!

The Five Little Pigs

This is "the little pig that went to market" from "The History of Five Little Pigs" as presented in Joseph Martin Kronheim's My First Picture Book (1893). You can find the images and text here via Project Gutenberg. Suffice to say that this version is much more complicated than the nursery rhyme our parents would recite as they wriggled our toes. In fact, here's the story that accompanies this illustration:

"There was once a family of Five Little Pigs, and Mrs. Pig, their mother, loved them all very dearly. Some of these little pigs were very good, and took a great deal of trouble to please her. The eldest pig was so active and useful that he was called Mr. Pig. One day he went to market with his cart full of vegetables, but Rusty, the donkey, began to show his bad temper before he had gone very far on the road. All the coaxing and whipping would not make him move. So Mr. Pig took him out of the shafts, and being very strong, drew the cart to market himself. When he got there, all the other pigs began to laugh. But they did not laugh so loudly when Mr. Pig told them all his struggles on the road. Mr. Pig lost no time in selling his vegetables, and very soon after Rusty came trotting into the market-place, and as he now seemed willing to take his place in the cart, Mr. Pig started for home without delay. When he got there, he told Mrs. Pig his story, and she called him her best and most worthy son."

The version we all remember ("This little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed at home, this little piggy had roast beef, this little piggy had none. And this little piggy went 'wee wee wee' all the way home") was first published in 1728. The moralizing in the many longer adaptations of this nursery rhyme is pretty amazing. There are tons of adaptations of "This little piggy..." in popular culture, including Agatha Christie's Poirot novel Five Little Pigs (1942) and a clothing store in Santa Monica called This Little Piggy Wears Cotton.

The Old Woman and Her Pig

The Old Woman and Her Pig was a popular story for children, albeit one that is largely forgotten today. The story itself is a cumulative one, in which the woman tries to get her recalcitrant pig to go over the stile (see image above) so she can get home. She tries to get a dog to bite the pig, but it won't, so she tries to get a stick to hit the dog, but it won't, so she asks fire to burn the stick, but... (you get the picture). There are several different versions of this tale on-line, perhaps the easiest to read is a 1902 version here. The version from Joseph Jacobs' English Fairy Tales can be found here.

I was a bit surprised to find that there are still several re-workings of this story in print. Perhaps the most recent is a 2007 version by Margaret Read McDonald and John Kanzler, although the reviewer for School Library Journal notes that they "cut out some of the action of the original and watered down the story so that the tale seems rather pointless." I guess the violence of the original (including the hope that the rope will hang the butcher that won't slaughter the ox) just doesn't fly today. My favorite edition, one well worth tracking down, is Paul Gladone's 1961 version of the story. I'm grateful that we have such a great children's literature section at Long Beach State.

Anecdotes of Tame and Wild Swine

This image comes from one of the many editions of William Darton's A Present for a Little Boy (an 1825 edition is available on-line here). In a section entitled "Anecdotes of Tame and Wild Swine" the story is told of a little girl at Wanscomb, in Kent, "who, in attempting to take away one of the young pigs, received from the sow so severe a bite, as to occasion the loss of her arm." The girl apparently fell into the sty (not visible in this dramatic engraving) and would have been killed were it not for the intervention of a neighbor. The lesson drawn from this tale: "pigs are swine and not all of a temper; nor are the same hogs equally kind at all times." I'll post more from various editions of this book, including the author's comments on the "learned pig," soon.

Revising Roald Dahl (Or Not) in the UK

One of the great pleasures of the internet is having weekly access to Chuck Shepherd's long-running feature News of the Weird without having to pick up my local alternative weekly and without an editor cutting out stuff they don't think would fly with our local audience. In last week's version I heard of yet another instance of British sensitivity (perhaps over-sensitivity is a better word) to Muslims. Under the headline "We Must Never Offend Anyone," Shepherd refers to a March 16, 2007 report in London's Daily Telegraph of how the head teacher at a school in Huddersfield changed the title of a student production of Roald Dahl's "The Three Little Pigs" (from Revolting Rhymes of 1982) to "The Three Little Puppies" to avoid making Muslim children feel uncomfortable singing about pigs. As it turns out, Mohammed Imran, a spokesman for the local Muslim community, pointed out that Islam does not prohibit the mentioning of pigs, condemning this change as unnecessary and the school overruled the teacher. Paul Stokes' article about the "controversy" (so to speak) "Three Little Piggies Win A Reprieve" in the Telegraph can be found here.

By the way, Dahl's poem has some great opening lines worth repeating:

The animal I really dig,
Above all others is the pig.
Pigs are noble. Pigs are clever,
Pigs are courteous. However,
Now and then, to break this rule,
One meets a pig who is a fool.

The Tale of Pigling Bland (1913)

I've been reading Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Pigling Bland (1913) today, surprised that I don't remember it from my childhood given how much I know my mom loves the Peter Rabbit stories. In the picture to the left, Pigling Bland is being given a license permitting him and his brother Alexander to go to the market in Lancashire. To make a long story (well, not really--it's a children's book) short, Pigling Bland loses his brother, winds up in the wrong county, meets a "lovely little black Berkshire pig" named Pig-Wig and escapes with her from Mr. Piperson's kitchen. While trying to get back to the bridge that marks the county boundary, the pair are stopped by a grocer, who realizes there is a reward posted for Pig-Wig's disappearance. This grocer figures that a pig with a walking stick can't escape very quickly, but while he goes to consult with a local ploughman the two pigs run like mad for the bridge and safety. It's a strange story, to say the least, one that Alison Lurie has argued (in Don't Tell the Grown-ups: Subversive Children's Literature (1990)) serves to stand in for Potter's own marriage and move to the country over her parents' objections in 1913.

You can find a host of Pigling Bland related merchandise, etc. on the interweb. One of the more interesting sites I found concerned the effort to turn The Tale of Pigling Bland into a musical last year. It appeared at the Toronto Fringe Festival, directed by Marc Richard with a book and lyrics by Suzy Conn and music by Mitchell Kitz. You can read about the production here. I wish I'd seen it...

The Headlong Career and Woful Ending of Precocious Piggy

One of the more remarkable children's books featuring a pig is Thomas Hood's The Headlong Career and Woful [sic] Ending of Precocious Piggy, by the Late Thomas Hood; Illustrated by His Son (Boston: Mayhew and Baker, 1859). In this tale, a pig leaves his mother to go see the wider world. He tries out a career as a landscape gardener, rides in a carriage, starts drinking, attends a ball and the fair, and buys a wig (see image at right) before meeting his end with the butcher. It's quite a dark story, one you can read for yourself here, as a hand-colored version has been digitized by the State University System of Florida.

Thomas Hood is perhaps more known in pig circles for his poem "The Lament of Toby, The Learned Pig," about which more later.