We all know the classic tale of The Three Little Pigs but what exactly did those little fellows get up to once they'd vanquished the big bad wolf?
In Jonathan Emmett and Steve Cox's excellent little book we find out what happens when the pigs enter the great 'Pie in the Sky Air Race' while waiting in the wings, a revenge-obsessed wolf wants to pay those little piggies back once and for all.
Still nursing a rather burnt bum, the wolf hatches a nefarious plan or two to scupper each little pig's efforts to build and fly a prize-winning plane.
The pigs aren't the brightest spanners in the toolbox (bar one, who is obviously a civil and mechanical engineering genius!). So one pig builds his plane out of straw, one builds his out of sticks and the smart one builds his out of bri...er I mean metal.
Come the day of the race, the pigs line up with the wolf who wheels out a rather sleek and dangerous-looking Saab Viggen-alike. They take off, with the roars of the crowds echoing in their ears but wolfie's nefarious plans mean the steel plane has no fuel, the straw plane is destroyed when wolfie flies through it, and the stick plane barely chugs into the sky before it too is ruined.
Can the three little pigs bounce back and win the day? Or will the wolf claim the prize and snaffle the pigs as dessert?
This book is brilliantly paced, full of excitement and a fitting way to revisit well loved characters with a couple of new wrinkles thrown into the mix. We loved the planes (we'd just been watching Porco Rosso when we grabbed this from the library so Charlotte's going through a bit of a 'plane obsessive' phase!) and we almost felt sorry for the wolf at times, I mean who wants to spend the rest of their days rubbing oinkment on a charred bottom?
Charlotte's best bit: Wolf flying through one piggy's plane at Mach 3. Ker-BOOM!
Daddy's favourite bit: What "The Barrel" does on the smart piggy's plane. No spoilers!