Point of View

1. Point of View Featuring the Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf

2. Point of View • Point of view is the way in which an author reveals characters, events, and ideas in telling a story. • In other words, it’s the vantage point from which a story is told.

3. First Person Point of View • If the speaker or narrator of a story is telling things from his or her perspective, it is called first person point of view. • Usually the speaker or narrator uses the pronoun I. This is a sign of first person point of view.

4. Third Person Point of View • If the narrator or speaker of a story is telling things from the perspective of an onlooker, it is called third person point of view. • If the speaker is unable to know what is in any character’s mind but his or her own, this is called limited view. • If the speaker is able to know the thoughts and feelings of other characters, then the speaker is omniscient (all knowing).

5. Unreliable Narrator • An unreliable narrator is a narrator who in some way distorts the truth. A first person narrator is usually unreliable because only one side of the story is being told.

6. Everybody knows “The Story of the Three Little Pigs” by Joseph Jacobs. It’s a story written to make the wolf look like a bad guy. In 1989, Jon Scieska wrote The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs! to clear up any misunderstanding about who the real villain of the story was. Both tell the same story, but from a different point of view. How does the point of view affect he meaning of the story? Read to find out.

7. Using the Venn Diagram, list some traits of each story, noting what they have in common.