How the Big Bad Wolf Got His Comeuppance - (Clayton County Trilogy) by Lisa Wilke Pope (Hardcover)

About the Book

When the Big Bad Wolf goes after three little pigs in Iowa, he's ill-prepared for their inventiveness and can-do spirit!

Book Synopsis

When the Big Bad Wolf goes after three little pigs in Iowa, he's ill-prepared for their inventiveness and can-do spirit!
What if the three little pigs' mother warned them about the big, bad wolf so that they could plan for--and even count on--his huffing and puffing? In this creative retelling, readers will be just as astonished as the wolf to discover how each pigs' strategic engineering unexpectedly leads to the familiar happy ending. Award-winning master etcher Arthur Geisert returns to his Clayton County, Iowa trilogy in this follow-up to Pumpkin Island. But this time, Geisert is back with his legendary pigs, whose remarkable resourcefulness and can-do spirit saved the day in Ice and The Giant Seed! Paired with Geisert's inventive and intricate illustrations, debut talent Lisa Pope Wilke's understated and droll text is sure to surprise and delight.

Review Quotes

"Struggling to keep her family afloat, a mother pig tells her three children that they have to seek their own fortunes. The classic narrative framework is here: The wolf tries to eat each pig at a house made out of grass bundles, a house made of 'a large pile of construction materials, ' and one that is a 'stately castle.' But each pig has a calculated plan for thwarting the wolf, who eventually slinks back home. The pigs' clever constructions, conveyed in Geisert's trademark detailed illustrations, will enthrall children who love to build things (or take them apart): There's a complicated mechanism for blasting the wolf with flour; a house under construction that puts itself together when the wolf huffs on it; and one that releases an 'intricate alarm system of horns and whistles' when the wolf puffs on it. The illustrations, hand-colored copperplate etchings, have a distinct and inviting texture... Vivid descriptors are used to bring the wolf's exertions to the page: 'Famished and desperate, the Big Bad Wolf huffed and puffed and blew mightily.' The worldbuilding in the illustrations is thoughtful and elaborate and will have readers poring over the pages. An entertaining delight for (nonpig) budding engineers everywhere." --Kirkus Reviews

"In Wilke Pope's wry reimagining of the porcine chestnut, ... the plucky pigs thwart the hungry wolf in elaborate and unexpected ways, dusting him with flour, utilizing his breath to blow a house into shape, and blasting him with sound, forcing him to retreat to the comforts of a hot bath in an elaborate footed tub... Geisert's fantastically detailed etchings, alive with twitchy lines, nervy hatchings, and dusty-hued washes, feature the woebegone wolf making his way through a chaotic rural landscape of wandering roads, ramshackle dwellings, and repurposed junk, and the convoluted contraptions of clever swine." --Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Award-winning children's book author Arthur Geisert has been creating etchings and hand-coloring them for picture books for over forty years. Geisert, who grew up in Los Angeles and learned to etch at the Otis Art Institute, has spent his entire adult life in the Midwest. He now lives on Main Street in Elkader, Iowa. Geisert's work has appeared in the New Yorker and Horn Book Magazine. It also has been collected by various museums and has been exhibited at The Art Institute of Chicago. In 2010, his book Ice was selected as a New York Times Best Illustrated Book, the third book on the list for Geisert. In recent years, he has published The Giant Seed, Thunderstorm, and Pumpkin Island, the first book in his trilogy about Clayton County, Iowa. How Big Bad Wolf Got His Comeuppance is the second book in the trilogy.