Little Red Riding Hood

A little girl meets a hungry wolf in the forest while on her way to visit her sick grandmother.

Kindergarten-Grade 3–This version of a familiar folktale features heavily stylized art and unremarkable prose. The traditional story line and plot points remain intact: a pretty child in a red cape goes to visit her sick grandmother, gets mixed up with a cunning wolf, and is rescued by a valiant woodsman. Evetts-Secker modifies it with implausible narrative details ("She had never noticed birdsong in the woods before. How strange!") and a total abandonment of the moral that concludes this traditionally cautionary tale ("…she wondered whether she would ever meet another wolf in the forest, and if so, what would she do then?"). Pass on this one.–Catherine Threadgill, Charleston County Public Library, SC
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

PreS-Gr. 2. Unlike the recent fractured-fairy-tale versions that make Red Riding Hood a strong hero who rescues herself, this picture book dramatizes the archetypal story of the loss of innocence. Red Riding Hood is a sweet, overprotected child. She always keeps to the path and does what grown-ups say--until one day she meets the wolf, who shows her the beauty of the woods and makes her stray. It's all shown with fun and uproar: the greedy beast rushes ahead and gobbles up Grandma and the little girl, and the woodcutter rescues them. But Ceccoli's beautiful, soft-toned pictures in acrylics, pencils, and oil pastels focus on the wolf's seductive power, his sleek body circling the child enraptured by a world she never saw before. On the last page, the child is in the cozy kitchen with Grandma, but outside the shadowy forest beckons. The story is very child friendly; there's no analysis. But the author is a Jungian scholar, and folklorists and students of children's literature will want to talk about the underlying coming-of-age journey. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved