The Three Ninja Pigs, Corey Rosen Schwartz

The Three Ninja Pigs is a fantasy picture book that is a spinoff of The Three Little Pigs.  There are three little pigs and a mean, big, bad wolf.  The pigs finally said “enough!”  They called him a bully and wanted it to end.  So to solve this they went to train at ninja school.  The sister pig was the only pig that stuck with karate all of the others gave up or thought they knew enough so quit.  The first pig wished he was more prepared when the wolf came, the second pig just ran away, but when the wolf got to the sister’s house the wolf was the one to run away.  They all went back to ninja school and the wolf never bothered them again.  I love this book and I will have it in my classroom library.

This book has a lot of great teachable components.  There is a glossary in the back explaining some of the karate terms.  I would use this to teach a mini lesson to show how to use a glossary.  The book talks about how the wolf is a bully.  So to create a better classroom community I would read this book aloud to the class and then have students talk about why we should not be a bully and what to do if someone is bullying you.  Also on every page there is some type of rhyming.  So I would connect this to poetry and have students write their own version of The Three Little Pigs in the form of a poem.  This is such a great book that creates many opportunities to use in the classroom.