Professor Goose debunks The three little pigs

A famous fairy tale gets a scientific fact check. Righteously waddling in to correct the supposed errors in this "faulty" classic, Mother Goose's academically trained great-niece Marie Curious Goose retells a kinder, gentler version of "The Three Little Pigs" in which everyone survives. Along the way, she offers a running critique. Noting that pigs don't have chins (only humans do, in point of fact) and scoffing at the notion that any wolf would have the lung power to blow down a house, she branches out to explain how the plot could have been more efficiently told by coding its repetitive elements with a looping algorithm. She also discusses how, like all the things that come in threes here, there are patterns to be found in nature, music, and math. She does make a few iffy claims and contradicts herself on the same page about whether straw is, or is not, a good building material, but overall readers will come away more aware of how the story connects, and takes liberties, with the real world. Bourgeois brings home the bacon with a quick afterword on the history of computer languages, from Ada Lovelace's contributions to Fortran. Griffiths' jovial cartoon illustrations add humor. A STEM-centric take, well worth wolfing down. (Picture book/folktale. 6-9) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.