If you love fairy tales with a twist, you must check out The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka. I first encountered the book myself in the fifth grade when we not only read the book but also acted it out in a courtroom drama. I, naturally, was the court reporter who couldn’t simply believe it when Alexander T. Wolf lied to the entire jury, knowing that he’d confessed to me prior to the trial! The scandal!

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The book is so much fun on its own; you don’t need a room full of thirty eleven-year-olds taking on its various roles and then some to enjoy it. Scieszka’s story makes the assumption that everything we know about the traditional tale of the three little pigs (and the big bad wolf, of course) is entirely false; that the story was biased in favor of the pigs and that we’ve never had the chance to hear the real story of how it all went down from the wolf himself. It makes sense, right? There’s always at least two sides to every story, after all, so why not hear the wolf out?

It’s quickly apparent that Alexander T. Wolf feels as if he has been victimized by bad press. Wolf “tells” Scieszka his sob story, which includes an attempt to borrow a cup of sugar from each of the pigs in hopes of baking his dear old granny a cake. Each visit, of course, was completely innocent—not an attempt to get some sausage or pork loin but in fact an ordinary neighborly visit. It’s all, Wolf maintains, nothing more than a huge misunderstanding.

Things went bad for the poor wolf when his cold kicked in, causing him to sneeze huge sneezes and destroying the pigs’ homes in the process. And during each home’s destruction, a dead pig was left amidst the rubble, and Wolf simply ate what was already killed—waste not, want not, and all. How could he help it, Wolf wants to know, when each home was so poorly constructed? (This is the one point you know we have to give him; who in their right mind, after wall, would build his home from sticks or straw—especially someone as low on the food chain as a pig?)

As with their collaborative work The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, Scieszka and illustrator Lane Smith have created an unforgettable, riotous, highly entertaining alternative to the popular fairy tale that’s not to be missed.