Little Red Riding Hood

Naive Little Red Riding Hood is threatened by a conniving wolf when she delivers some muffins to her ailing grandmother, in a photographic reinterpretation of the classic fairy tale in which weimaraner dogs play the characters.

Ages 7-9. Surely everyone must know that Wegman is the man who takes pictures of his weimaraners, often dressing them up in clothing of one sort or another. Lately, they've been wearing fairy- tale garb, for example, in Cinderella. Some people love the concept, others hate it, and only you know whether these books have a place in your library. However, no matter what you think of the pictures, there is also a story to deal with here, and that's where even the least pure of purists may have a quibble. With Little Red Riding Hood you usually get either the tame ending (Grandma's hiding in the closet, and the hunter saves Red Riding Hood) or the more traditional, grizzly ending (Little Red Riding Hood and Grandma get eaten, but the hunter slices the wolf open and the two jump out, unharmed). Here we get the Wegman version: the wolf looks at the hunter, gets dizzy, throws up, and vomits out Red Riding Hood and her grandmother, none the worse for wear. There are also a few problems with the pictures. Kids may question why the wolf is just an undressed dog (and may blanch at the dead raccoon at his feet in one shot), while adults will notice that the one two-page spread is the same shot with the negative reversed. An offering for those who don't mind their Red Riding Hood with eyes and teeth as big as Granny's Ilene Cooper