Thursday, August 19, 1999
I brought The True Story of the Three Little Pigs for the story today to continue the 3 Little Pigs from yesterday.
I love, love, love this book! It started my “Fractured Fairy Tales” obsession. 
Every year we would do a huge compare and contrast of all the Three Little Pigs books I had. (Did you know there are two versions of the traditional tale? One where the wolf gets away, and one where the pigs eat him!) I also have different versions of Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood (Lon Po Po is excellent!), and over the years have added others like Golem to read with Pandora’s Box with the older kids. (It took me a few years to realize it is okay to read picture books to the big kids, but I still don’t do it as often as I would like.)
I started by asking them what happened in the story yesterday. They told me, and very well. These kids have great storytelling abilities.
I am so green.
I told them I had another book and showed it to them – they read “True” and went “oooo…” How funny. They were really excited. They thought it was neat. They liked the illustrations. At the end I asked them what they thought of it. They really enjoyed it. And they believed the story. When I asked them which story/version they believed, they said this one. I asked why and DL answered, “Because it says it’s the TRUE story.” That was amazing to me because I read the same book to 2nd graders last fall. And they didn’t believe it – they believed the version they’d always heard. I talked to Mrs. J about that and she said it’s because it’s earlier in the year – but honestly, only by about a month. Interesting.
I can tell I’m getting better at reading the books – well, not better per se but more comfortable – I have been using a lot of inflection an even a sing-song voice at the rhymes. The best part is I’m not doing it on purpose, it’s happening naturally!
I LOVE reading books out loud. I probably enjoy the picture books more, but I do tend to hog the parts when we do shared reading in fifth grade. 
As a kid I liked it to show off, but now it’s because I love to read and I want the kids to love it, too.
I bought a signed copy of The True Story of The Three Little Pigs when I lived in NYC. I use it with 3rd graders to illustrate POV. I get plenty of that when my students come in from recess and start telling different versions of who did what to whom. I remind them of that story.
I, too, LOVE to read aloud. When I walk around the room reading (and I’m a very dramatic reader) and the students are hanging on every word, I feel like I have the word TEACHER stamped on my forehead.
For the last three years I’ve managed to read all three Wayside School books. Those books have gotten more of my students excited about reading than any other books I’ve ever read.
I LOVE The True Story of the Three Little Pigs! Did you get to meet Jon Scieszka? One of the sixth grade teachers has borrowed it from me a few times to teach POV. The kids love it.
I have a few of the Wayside books in my library, I will have to check them out! I need to read more of the Gordon Korman series with them this year because they really get the boys interested in reading. My favorite is the Island series – I call it LOST for kids!