Wolf's Honor!

In the land of make believe anything can happen! My kids (for non teachers, my students) love magical-mystical happenings with uncanny characters and cruel villains. Growing up, I remember the mean step-mother in Cinderella, the three bears who scared Goldilocks away and the Big Bad Wolf who huffed and puffed and blew the piggy’s house down. But lately, authors have started a series of ‘the other side of the fairy tale’. One class favorite is the The real story of The Three Little Pigs.

According to the wolf he doesn’t know how this whole Big Bad Wolf thing got started and explains “maybe it's because of our diet. Hey it’s not my fault wolves eat cute little animals like bunnies and sheep and pigs. That's just the way we are. If cheeseburgers were cute, folks would probably think you were big and bad, too.”

We also remember that he huffed and puffed to blow the pigs' houses down, it turns out that he simply had a bad cold and had a powerful sneeze. Who could blame him for eating the pigs that died when their houses fell as a result of his sneezing? “It seemed like a shame to leave a perfectly good ham dinner lying there in the straw. So I ate it up. Think of it as a big cheeseburger just lying there.”

He continues to explain that he was only visiting the pigs to borrow a cup of sugar to make a cake for his deal old granny's birthday. The pigs wouldn't even give him any sugar! When the third pig insulted his grandmother, he got a little crazy. The police found him trying to break down the pig's door, “The rest, as they say, is history. The news reporters found out about the two pigs I had for dinner. They figured a sick guy going to borrow a cup of sugar didn't sound very exciting. So they jazzed up the story with all that "huff and puff" and "blow your house down" stuff.”

After we read the story, I asked my kids whether or not they were convinced by the wolf's version of the story. One of my boys answered “Yes, because I like to eat pigs and cheeseburgers too.”