From Publishers Weekly
BB has enough troubles to make any wolf sing the blues. A poor Mississippi Delta farmer in the mean old '20s, BB has to scrape by to support his wife and cubs, a job made no easier by the pigs (meant literally) who keep harassing the beaten-down wolves, and threatening to take his property. So he drinks, and belts out the blues at night in a honkytonk. Just when it looks like things might get better, tragedy intervenes, and BB is forced to leg it out of town-but not before taking revenge on just one of the Three Little Pigs who brought his family to ruin. Arnold's debut young-adult graphic novel pushes the envelope for that audience in terms of slashing, bloody violence, but also tries to pair it with thoughtful commentary. Aiming for a Jim Crow-era take on Maus, in which blacks are wolves and whites are pigs, Arnold's fast-paced story (with energetic artwork by Koslowski (The King) doesn't quite do the subject justice, but fills it with enough action and gutbucket blues to keep readers interested.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From School Library Journal
Grade 10 Up Legend and oral history have been brought to life through a familiar tale, now set in Mississippi during the 1920s. If readers thought it was the three little pigs who were the victims, they need to think again. These ruthless pigs are business- and landowners, and they're determined to get BB Wolf's land. BB Wolf, a farmer and blues musician, finds this intolerable and unleashes his wrath against them. However, he can't help but sing the blues as he is discriminated against (Funny thing. Can't sit where the pigs sit, can't eat in the same restaurants....Hell, can't nearly find a decent bar that'll serve us wolves. The detail in the black-and-white drawings allows the anger and violence to emanate from the pages and will draw readers into the story. A lengthy afterword tells about the life and times of the real BB Wolf (Barnabus Benjamin Wolf), his influence on the American Blues movement, and his execution for murder. History and Blues fans will be intrigued by the parallels between his story and this one. Karen Alexander, Lake Fenton High School, Linden, MI
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
So, it’s the South in the Jazz Age and you’ve got the dark-furred, oppressed, and hard-drinking wolves, who are loving to their families and rally around each other in hard times; and you’ve got the lily-white, fat, greedy, and corrupt pigs, who own the police. When the pigs murder the family of BB Wolf, burning down his house in a land-grabbing scheme, and BB hides out in local bars and jazz clubs before blazing a bloody, intestine-scattered trail of revenge, what you’ve got is a classic children’s fairy tale turned into one very angry racial allegory. First-time author Arnold quite effectively favors emotion and gut-wrenching (often literally) twists over balanced historical reportage, which is not necessarily ill-fitting given the hideous civil-rights environment of the time and the fairy-tale trappings of the story, which may prove a hard sell on the older teens for whom this book is most assuredly suited. Koslowski’s art, however, subverts the fairy-tale elements and creates potently expressive faces and sinuous, active bodies for the anthropomorphized animals. Grades 9-12. --Jesse Karp
