The Three Little Pigs Count to 100

September 7, 2015
Similar to her treatment of letters in The Three Bears ABC (2013), Maccarone blends the story of the Three Little Pigs with a counting lesson, adding in a primer on shapes and several nursery-rhyme references. Pistacchio (a pseudonym for Spanish artists Núria Aparicio and Joan I. Guardiet) illustrates the action in vibrant digital cartoons; the first pig purchases five bundles of straw from a leprechaun, while the second gets sticks from Pinocchio himself (it’s unclear whether they’ve been sourced from the puppet’s nose). The multiple educational elements laced into the story compete for attention somewhat, but it’s still an entertaining introduction to numeric, geometric, and fairy-tale basics: in one of the funniest sequences, Humpty Dumpty tries to persuade the third pig to build a house from eight bags of leaves, while Puss in Boots offers 10 pails of peanuts. Ages 4–7.

August 1, 2015

K-Gr 2-Maccarone successfully combines teaching complex shapes and numbers, using a number of fairy-tale characters to do so. Mama Pig sends her three sons to seek their fortunes. The first pig meets Rumpelstiltskin and uses his straw to build a cylindrical house, which is unsurprisingly unsturdy. Pig number two meets Pinocchio and buys materials to build a cone-shaped teepee, which also doesn't hold up. The third pig meets a succession of characters, each offering him a larger number of inappropriate building supplies, such as leaves, wool, and peanuts. Finally, he encounters the Gingerbread Man, who has 100 bricks. The story, numbers, and shapes are summarized at the end. Younger children will likely need help interpreting the apple and brick graphs. VERDICT Cheerful illustrations and familiar fairy tale characters enliven this tale of numbers and shapes.-B. Allison Gray, Goleta Public Library, CA

Copyright 2015 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 15, 2015
The three little pigs take on math. As the title indicates, the story overtly embeds math content in its text. First, one mother pig cuts two apples in half so that she and her three children can have a snack, but since they're still hungry, she sends them off to seek their fortunes. The first two pigs acquire their respective, traditional building materials, with the text identifying five bundles of hay to build a cylindrical hut and six sticks (and some sheets) to build a conical teepee. The wolf's huffing and puffing gives both pigs time to escape, and it also apparently slows him down enough that the third pig has time to reject various materials-seven baskets of wool, eight bags of leaves, nine boxes of rose petals, 10 pails of peanuts-until he finds someone (the Gingerbread Man) selling bricks and buys 100 for a bunkerlike house in the shape of a cube. After failing to huff and puff this house down, the wolf becomes a vegetarian, and the pigs gather in the brick house for dinner. A few extra pages prompt readers to revisit the shapes and numbers from the story, but these feel superfluous to the book rather than integral and enriching. Digital art cleverly incorporates metafictive references but is otherwise undistinguished. Count on other retellings for the fractured-fairy-tale shelf. (Math picture book. 3-6)

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January 1, 2016
Three pig brothers making their way in the world encounter various fairy-tale characters who offer them house-building materials (a Pinocchio-like boy has six sticks, a Humpty-like egg has eight bags of leaves, etc.). This amiable counting lesson could do without the muddying introduction to cylinders, cones, and cubes, but the sleek art, featuring nostalgia-baiting Golden Bookstyle motifs, is sensational.

(Copyright 2016 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)