From School Library Journal
Grade 1-3–Three little rigs are sent off by their mama to build their own individual garages. The blue one builds his out of wood, the yellow one uses bricks, and the red one makes his out of steel. The evil wrecking ball comes and smashes the first two. The final rig, along with his brothers, enlists the help of the cranes and sends the wrecking ball, the mean magnet, and the cruel cutter to their fiery deaths in the melting pot. This fractured tale is not for the faint of heart. The wrecking ball itself has a scary, monsterlike face. The pages with the rigs are, by contrast, light and shiny. The accomplished artwork adds great drama to the story. Kids who love trucks will enjoy this adaptation, and fans of David Gordon's
The Ugly Truckling (HarperCollins, 2004) are also a likely audience.–
Linda M. Kenton, San Rafael Public Library, CA Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
PreS-Gr. 2. NASCAR dads and little grease monkeys rejoice. As in
The Ugly Truckling [BKL Je 1 & 15 04], Gordon has changed the oil on another familiar folktale. In this vehicular version of "The Three Little Pigs," the offspring of big-rig parents must roll forth into the wide industrial wasteland to "build their own garages." But if the "big, bad wrecking ball" has anything to say about it, their shelters won't remain standing for long. The illustrations clearly show Gordon's background as an animation concept artist, with headlights, bumpers, and rivets smoothly coalescing into expressive facial features. However, even with the rigs' shiny primary colors providing rays of cheer, the sooty, factory-block surroundings do little to counteract the tale's inherent violence--brought to a particularly harsh extreme in the final image of the wrecking ball's demise. But the familiar story line, turbocharged with things on wheels and helpful machinery (Gordon's anthropomorphic transformations extend to air compressors and pneumatic drills), will mesmerize tool-and-vehicle-obsessed little ones.
Jennifer MattsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
