Three little pigs—Trosclair, Thibodeaux and Ulysse—must each build themselves a house in this Cajun retelling of the classic English tale from author/illustrator team Mike Artell and Jim Harris. Observed by that cunning alligator Claude, who also starred in Petite Rouge: A Cajun Red Riding Hood, the pigs build houses of straw, sticks and bricks, respectively, and when the gator comes calling, the younger two find their new domiciles destroyed. It is only the oldest and wisest, Ulysse, whose house can withstand the gator's onslaught—even when he climbs down the chimney...

Like the earlier Petite Rouge: A Cajun Red Riding Hood from this team, I found Three Little Cajun Pigs quite entertaining, appreciating both its rhyming read-aloud text in Cajun dialect, and its expressively humorous illustrations, done in watercolor and pencil. The added search-and-find elements, in which a mouse must be located on each page, adds to the reading fun, and I think young picture-books readers, especially those who enjoy folk and fairy-tales, will enjoy it. I do wonder, as I often do in cases such as this, whether this represents an actual Cajun variant of a well-known folktale, one that has been around for a while, or whether Artell simply adapted a story from another tradition, giving it a Cajun "skin." I do see that fellow Louisiana author Berthe Amoss has retold a similar tale, in her The Three Little Cajun Pigs, but not having read that volume, nor any other Cajun folklore, it's difficult to say. I did appreciate the inclusion of a Cajun glossary here, and would recommend the book as a read-aloud for audiences which enjoy folk and fairy-tales. ( )

summary: The Cajun Brothers (3) each build a house made from a different material. Which one will stand the strength of the gator?
reflection: I thought this was a silly take on the classic "Three Little Pigs" story. I smiled while reading it because it's almost kind of hard to read with all the differently pronounced words!
I think this book would be great for a read-aloud, but I probably wouldn't give it to younger kids to read, even though it's a picture book, just because it's a picture book.

Three Little Cajun Pigs
By: Mike Artell
I read this book as my fairytale book because it is based off of the fairytale/fable “The Three Little Pigs” it’s just a Cajun spin off. This book was about three pig brothers who had to go out on their own and build their houses. They each built a house with a different material and then the big Gator tested the houses when he knocked them down to try to eat the pigs. The two things that made me like this book was the incorporation of Cajun dialect with a glossary and the illustrations.
Personally I love the Cajun dialect. I went to New Orleans three years ago and fell in love with the place, the culture, the food, and the people especially and the way they talk. This book is written in Cajun dialect so there are words in there that you wouldn’t hear or see in Maryland. I loved this because it really added culture to the book and made it not like the typical version of The Three Little Pigs that I’ve read over and over again. Along with this dialect, in the front of the book there is a glossary that lists some of the Cajun words and their definitions that are used in the book. At times I had to go back and look at the glossary to see what was meant by the phrase. I think that the glossary is so useful because the Cajun dialect is so different from what is seen here in Maryland.
The illustrations in this book were phenomenal. They went right along with what the story was saying and have so much color and detail to them while also looking kind of rough. While reading the story, I had to look at the illustrations at times to get a better grasp of what was going on in that part of the story. With the detail that they included, I could have not even read the story, just looked at the pictures, and still would have known what the story was about. Also in Louisiana, things can be rough and not crisp because you can be out in the bayou and living a Cajun lifestyle. The illustrations look a little rough as if they could still be colored in sketches. I think that this added so much character to the book.
The main message of this story is to take your time, just because you finish first doesn’t mean you did something the best. The first two brothers laughed at the third brother because he took forever to build his house while they were already finished and playing. But in the end, their two houses were the ones the gator knocked down with his tail but the third house was the strongest so he couldn’t knock it down. So take your time, it’s not always a race to see who can finish something first. ( )

This book was about three little pigs that get kicked out by their mothers home and she tells them that it is time that they found their own homes. They all have different ideas as to what they want their houses to be made of so they build them. However in town there is an alligator that wants to eat them up and each time he goes to their houses their houses get destroyed. The only house that stays is the one made of brick. Eventually the alligator goes down the chimney but get stuck and when the little pigs realize he's learned his lesson they let him go and he never bothers them again.

Too long for me to read entirely right now. The wolf is replaced by a 'gator, but otherwise it seems like there's not much more going for this than the Cajun setting. ( )