From Publishers Weekly
These four classics illustrated by French artists, components of the Little Pebbles series, appear in an inviting design and intimate trim size. Each volume delivers a well-known story with evocative artwork. For Little Red Riding Hood, Martin employs an angular cartoon style and pure-black charcoal line that resembles Art Spiegelman's work. Roederer works in a waxy, vivid medium to create a rustic French countryside for Puss in Boots and a cozy domestic space for Goldilocks; her faultless eye for color recalls Bonnard or Matisse. In Mathieu's The Three Little Pigs, the porcine siblings cavort in precisely detailed woodsy watercolors; every yellow filament of straw, brown wooden board and reddish brick is closely observed, and the sympathetic trio stand out in a soft pinkish-brown. Each book concludes with a game: a random series of images that represent moments in the plot ("Can you put them back in the right order?"). The books emphasize the art far more than the words, yet readers will note a few variations from the standard versions of the tales. Wolves, for instance, come to bad ends here: when a huntsman snips open the wolf to free Little Red Riding Hood, he "did not survive the operation," and the Three Pigs' nemesis falls into a pot of boiling water. Further, the Pigs' famous "not by the hair of my chinny chin chin" becomes "not by the hair on my piggy little chin!" With just those few tweaks, these traditionalist texts provide the bases for refreshing, carefully considered new images. Ages 3-6.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
...just the right size for preschoolers' little hands. The books in the Little Pebbles series are beautifully illustrated and bound well enough to withstand nightly rereading. --
Wilmington News Journal, 11/21/99This is a near-irresistible rendition of the Grimm tale, in which a plucky Red Riding Hood marches resolutely through a birch forest to bring her ailing grandmother a decidedly Gallic pick-me-up: "a piece of pie and a bottle of wine." In this telling, the wicked wolf makes short work of both grandma (whom we only meet in the book's final illustration) and grand-daughter, only to have his bloated belly efficiently snipped open by a passing hunter. "The wolf, of course, did not survive the operation", and Little Red Riding Hood gets to keep part of his hide "so that her mother could make her a nice fur coat." The pictures are fresh, bright and wittily action-packed. The format is appealingly small, and the $6.95 price makes this the best children's book bargain in many a moon. In the same series are a Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Puss in Boots and Three Little Pigs. A 1998 Parents' Choice® Silver Honor.
Reviewed by Selma G. Lanes, Parents' Choice® 1998 -- From Parents' Choice®
[A]n inviting design and intimate trim size. . . . Delivers a well-known story with evocative artwork. -- Publishers Weekly, 12/7/98
