THE THREE LITTLE WOLVES AND THE BIG BAD PIG

Never mind the other incarnations of this tale—classic, fractured, rapped; this inversion will have children giggling from the outset. Sent into the world by a mother who wears hair curlers, three "cuddly" wolves build a brick house, then try to fend off a snarling thug of a pig who demolishes it with a sledgehammer. Their next place is concrete; the pig has a pneumatic drill. They construct a metal fortress, complete with steel chains and Plexiglas; the pig goes for dynamite. Then they build a house of flowers and the pig pulls a "Ferdinand," not only reforming but making it a happy menage a quatre. This latter-day plea for a peaceable kingdom reckons once and for all with the question at the core of this familiar tale—why must pigs and wolves be enemies? Oxenbury provides dauntingly well- executed watercolors, offering such charming contrasts as an angular modernistic concrete home in an otherwise pastoral setting. (Picture book. 5-10)