My 3 year old loved this book, 7 year old is an advanced reader so he wasn't enthused. It definitely isn't your traditional Three Little Pigs tale. The illustrations are beautiful, and the abacus is clever! The way the story builds between the reader and narrator is engaging and fun. Would absolutely love to add to our bookshelf, and would buy as a gift for others.

Thank you Penguin Random House Canada, Tundra Books, and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest review!

A new take on "The Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf," this story involves the reader and narrator, with there reader complaining about the length of the story and the narrator adding more and more until the reader is satisfied that it is a complete story. The illustrations using an abacus are unique and fun. Cute addition to a library or classroom and could be used to help teach beginning-middle-and-end of a story.

First of all, I love the abacus pig cover, it just makes sense (and is very clear) that this is a counting fairy tale. I think it's super fun how we build the story, build the characters, and play with concepts like colors and alphabetical names and fun facts. I laughed at the references in the 26 named pigs, and love how the story ended. I hope to have this on my personal shelf when I have kiddos.

Thank you Penguin Random House Canada, Tundra Books, and NetGalley for the ARC!

A fun counting story retelling the story if the 3 little pigs. Makes you laugh at the changes made to the story to make it longer. Enjoyable for 6 and under

I received this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

First, the medium for the art was very original and creative, the pigs were the wooden beads on an abacus ,you don't see that in children's books everyday.

The story was also quite original and funny, the story consists of the audience being displeased of the narration of the Three Little Pigs story.

I'm learning that fourth wall break children's books are my favorite to read out loud.

I try to give these a one-over before I read them to Jeremiah, since ARCs can have formatting issues. I saw that it was a conversation book, where the narrator tells the story and presumably a small child offers complaint. I thought this was going to be a lot of fun.

Turns out, Jeremiah was not a fan. I'm not sure where I lost him, but the funny just...didn't line up for him.

It really is super cute. A dozen version of The Three Little Pigs, each one less satisfying to the unseen child. And as we go along, the more pigs, and the more outlandish we get.

Maybe Jeremiah was just grumpy.

I order the children's books for our library. I felt this was too busy. Too much for the kids to absorb on each page. We will not be ordering it.

Too Many Pigs and One Big Bad Wolf was absolutely hysterical! We laughed so hard reading this story because it was just so ridiculously sarcastic. The illustrations were fabulous and helped tell the silly story really well. While we would have liked for the book to be a little bit longer, it was still a fantstic read to share with my young reader.

You can hear the laughter as you read Too Many Pigs and One Big Bad Wolf aloud! Readers and children alike will be delighted by this story/counting book. At first, the stories are quick. “Once upon a time, there were three little pigs. Then the wolf ate them. THE END.” leads to “Once upon a time, there were twenty nine pigs. The wolf ate one a day for a month…It was February. During a leap year.” and more silly, laugh-out-loud statements. Mixed in with these ridiculous tales are counting (pigs posed on an abacus) and the alphabet (pigs named in alphabetical order.) This creatively illustrated picture book can be read in four different ways: the wolf vs. pig simple story, identifying colors, letters of the alphabet and counting. Kudos to Davide Cali and Marianna Balducci! 5 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley, Penguin Random House Canada, Davide Cali and Marianna Balducci for this ARC.

This book definitely adds a different spin to the traditional version of the Three Little Pigs. The commentary between the narrator and the reader make for a great literary example for author's craft. Each math concept lends to the possibility for great math talk in the classroom and could lead to many inquiry projects. The "short" stories with varying degrees of detail have great potential for learning about story elements as many young writers begin their writerly lives.

Outside of education, this book is a fun book that will produce some giggles for sure from its younger readers as they join the book's reader in encouraging the narrator to tell a real story.

I'm somewhat conflicted on this book, because on one hand I thought it was a silly and fun book with adorable illustrations, on the other hand it does fall flat a little with the repetition. Each "retell" of the story doesn't add much to the one before, and there isn't as many discussion points as I thought in the perspectives of early math learning. I love the visuals in the book though!

This story made me laugh, but my little reviewer declared it boring and asked for another story instead. I guess she didn't find it as funny. Still, 4 stars from me, and I hope your tiny humans have a better sense of humor than mine did this week!

The narrator tells the story of the 3 little pigs, but the child listening wants a longer story. The narrator changes it up to add more pigs, to make them skateboarders and soccer players, and a whole list of them alphabetically. But nothing makes the child happy, even when, in the end, the wolf doesn't eat any more pigs. All the pigs are lined up on an abacus, making it easy for your little story readers to work on their counting along with the wolf.

I was provided an ARC copy of this book through Netgalley. My thanks to the publisher and the author for providing it to me.

Too Many Pigs and One Big Bad Wolf: A Counting Story
The storyteller’s audience is not happy! Would you be?

“Once upon a time, there were three little pigs.
Then the wolf ate them.
THE END.”

“This story is too short! I want a longer one!”

The narrator tries (not very hard) to make the story longer, first adding more pigs, then random details - One was a skateboarder. He was eaten first! There were 10, no 11! They were a soccer team!
He tries 26 pigs in alphabetical order, then 29 for the days in a month (Feb.; Leap Year)
101 pigs wanted to make a movie, but - surprise! - the wolf ate them.
When he gets to 300, the listener wants to know if it will make the story longer, but the pigs were tiny and the wolf ate them like cereal.

The illustrations are clever and colorful, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, and the silliness will be a hit with kids. For the adult reading, it is at once repetitive and disjointed, and the transitions can be abrupt, but touching on addition, the colors of a rainbow, alphabetical order, and other devices offers extension ideas for the classroom or storytime.
This twisted take on The Three Little Pigs is sure to be popular with children.

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for this honest review

This funny, smart take on the classic tale of the Three Little Pigs will be a favorite of preschoolers. The narration tries to tell the shortest possible story about the pigs being eaten as the wolves, and a second "voice" (the reader) gets to speak up and say "no, tell us more. That's not the story, etc." In the vein of "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, children will love getting to argue with the narrator and watch as new versions of pigs who play sports or who like to dress up get counted on an abacus.

This would be a great book to read along with an abacus toy to use as a prop. I read this with two preschoolers, and they thoroughly enjoyed the book. I highly recommend this for a primary math teacher's classroom library, or any library!

More of this, please. For fans of those books that deconstruct stories, and go all meta and have people interject from 'off camera', this concerns someone who wants a story, and someone who only knows how to tell tales of a wolf eating pigs, and that in the bluntest, least satisfying way possible. The pigs here are represented by beads on an abacus, until they get just too many to mention, so there is some number fun as well as the suitably bonkers ability of the story to interrupt itself and present itself in such a delirious way. Such a clever design idea adds popping colour to the page, and it's just a joy from start to end. Unless you're one of the pigs, that is.

Once upon a time there was a cute story that made your kids giggle. Be warned your children will request this book over and over and over.

This book is a fractured fairytale based on the story of the Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf. The premise of the story is a conversation between two characters, maybe a narrator and a listener/reader using two different font colours. The narrator is trying to tell a short story about a wolf and pigs but the listener feels the story is too short. The narrator then gradually adds or multiplies the number of pigs from the previous page until there are way too many pigs but the story isn’t any longer and the two speakers give up.

While being a funny play on a beloved fairytale, it is also an invitation for exploring math concepts using manipulatives such as a rekenrek (abicus) and pictorial representations such as groups in multiplication. This book also gives options for a “high ceiling low floor” approach to mathematical problem solving because it allows children to enter at any point. There are questions about basic addition and also multiplication.

This is a fairly short but interesting story that I think would have a lot of buy in from early and middle elementary students in grades 1-4. I could definitely see myself using this in Math class to bring literacy and numeracy together with my Grade 3 students and would recommend this book to my colleagues.

I really appreciate the opportunity from Netgalley and the publisher to read and review an advance copy of this book! I am looking forward to purchasing a copy for my students in the future!

This book was really cute and fun! It seems perfect for younger children, though it was a bit repetitive.

Thanks for allowing my son and I to review this book before it’s release in exchange for an honest review.

The pictures were adorable and I liked the idea of the book, especially talk of all sorts of numbers, even large ones.

We rated this one at 3 stars because it was a little too repetitive and that sort of took away from the fun of reading it. It would’ve been more fun to add some more silliness in.

I was given an advance digital book in exchange for an honest opinion. I found the book to be absorbing all the while teaching counting in a series of short nonsensical easy-to-read stories using the limitless number of pigs in different situations. lined up on the abacus, appear as one for each month of the year, then 26 lined up in alphabetical order, each ever increasing the number of little pigs. Finally, floating in a bowl of cereal, all written from the wolf’s point of view.and each abruptly ending with I ate them. Lastly, one expects it to end I ate them but finishes with he was full.. The author definitely uses finesse in the ability to apply so many concepts in such short stories stillkeeping the reader’s attention.Thie bookalso teaches the different parts of a well constructed story.. Yes, I would recommend this book for young readers. Thanks to #NetGalley for the opportunity to review early.