The Three Little Pigs (Lift the Pictures/Find the Words)

A retelling of the favorite children's story in rebus form includes a pop-up scene and lift-up flaps designed to help youngsters discover the meaning of words and improve their reading skills

PreSchool-Grade 1 These additions to the toy-book craze feature well-known fairytales in a lift-the-flap rebus format. Each title also has two weakly constructed pop-up or movable pages. Obviously, the emphasis is on the visualnot on the narrative. The illustrations are more successful in The Three Little Pigs than in Sleeping Beauty. The humorous watercolors show a hobo wolf and three pigs with very definite personalities. The Sleeping Beauty illustrations are unimaginative, bordering on the comic strip style. The very simplified texts are choppy and pedestrian. Such barebones retellings lack all literary polish, but beginning readers will be able to tackle them. Fragile construction and marginal literary quality should limit school and public library purchase. Heide Piehler, Shorewood Public Lib . , Wis.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

These delightful new versions of the fairy tales follow the traditional story lines. In the first title, each of three pigs chooses to build his house out of different materialsstraw for one, wood for another and a third out of brick. Of course, the first two homes don't fare well when the wolf starts huffing and puffing, but the brick home survives, and the the pigs are victorious. In the second book, Beauty sleeps beneath entangled vines; she and the prince dance by the castle upon her awakening. Wallner creatively combines rebus puzzles with lift-up flaps and pop-up scenes and offers the reader an enchanting re-introduction to the tale. His spirited watercolors add zest and humor to both tales. Ages 3-8.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.