THREE LITTLE DASSIES

Mashing up the ever-popular English story of “The Three Little Pigs” with her Namibian experiences, Brett uses her magical watercolor-and-gouache paintings to create a distinctive visual world. Dassies (rock hyraxes) live among the reddish stones of this desert-like country. Soft and cuddly, they have a predator in the black eagles that live above, and they come together in an original version of the story, complete with a grass house, a stick house and a stone house built by each of three dassie sisters. The first two are taken (fear not, it's only temporary) by a white eagle, but when he tries to “flap and clap and blow” the stone house in, he fails. When he tries the chimney route, the fire burns his feathers, turning him into the black eagle seen today. The animal characters sport adaptations of Western clothing that are seen in Namibia today, down to the turbans worn by the Herero women since Victorian times. The dress prints from the clothing also appear in the illustrator's trademark borders around each two-page spread. Beguiling. (Picture book. 4-8)