Big Bad Wolf Investigates Fairy Tales: Fact-checking your favourite stories with SCIENCE!

Meet the Big-Not-Quite-As-Bad-As-You-Thought-Wolf! You’ll definitely have come across him before in many traditional tales, he's always the one causing trouble and often ends up running away in pain!

This laugh-out-loud book will have the reader questioning the possibility of events such as wolves blowing down straw houses, Jack climbing to the top of a beanstalk, and a pumpkin being turned into a moving carriage.

Big Bad Wolf Investigates Fairy Tales is a fantastic resource to use with reluctant readers and also with children who prefer non-fiction to narrative. Its engaging content and wonderful illustrations will quickly have children talking, creating and imagining alternative plots and characters with alternate motives.

Picture book / Reviewed by Maria Faithorn, teacher

Suggested Reading Age 7+

Catherine Cawthorne and Sara Ogilvie join forces to create a unique and instantly captivating book in Bad Wolf Investigates Fairy Tales. Once upon a time, there was a big bad wolf, who'd had just about enough of all of this fairy tale nonsense. After all, who would really want to wear a slipper made of glass? And would gingerbread really be the best material to build a house with?

This is a hilarious and extremely clever book, that would capture any young child's imagination with its humour, irony and witty questioning. It builds brilliantly on the Key Stage One curriculum, tapping into knowledge of materials, and plant and animals characteristics. It's an excellent book to use as a 'hook' for a particular science unit of work; the questions being its real strength as it builds on the child's natural sense of enquiry.

The layout is visually captivating, funny and wonderfully enticing and will have anyone keep returning to and flicking through the endless boxes of information. A book to share at home or in the classroom. This is certainly a spectacular book, exciting to read and debate with family and friends.

Picture book / Reviewed by Louise Gahan, teacher

Suggested Reading Age 5+

Somewhat fed up of always being 'the bad guy', the Big Bad Wolf decides to take a closer, more investigative, look at the fairy tales we all know and love, to see if he could have done the things he's been blamed for (such as 'eating grandma whole').  Along the way, he also revisits a number of other fairy tales including Cinderella, to find out about dancing in glass slippers; the Three Little Pigs to discover how hard it is to blow down a house of straw; and Hansel and Gretel, to see how well a house made of gingerbread would fare in a forest.

In Big Bad Wolf Investigates Fairy Tales, Wolf presents each fairy tale (useful for those children who might not know the fairy tale), before questioning what we know about these stories, and what might actually happen in the real world and with a healthy scientific approach - plus a good dose of humour. Wolf asks, for example, 'Are big ears really the better to hear you with?' (answer: apparently not), and investigates just high was the bed that the princess in The Princess and the Pea slept in (answer: the same height as two giraffes!).  

By probing fairy tales and questioning what we're told, Wolf equips children to start asking questions about stories they hear and the world around them.  It brings science into the everyday, and guides children to find scientific ways to answer the questions they might have. It's also very, very funny, thanks in large part to the brilliant illustrations by Sara Ogilvy that cleverly bring together the fairy tales and Wolf's questions, with much to amuse and entertain young readers.

Big Bad Wolf Investigates Fairy Tales is highly recommended for any child who enjoys asking questions, and for any adult who is keen to engender a love of science and STEM among the children they care for or teach.

Picture book / Reviewed by Elen Green

Suggested Reading Age 5+