Little Red Riding Hood [Hardcover]

Josephine Evetts-Secker (Author, Narrator), Nicoletta Ceccoli (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2004 | Age Level: 4 and up | Grade Level: P and up

An illustrated retelling of the classic children's fairytale. Wolf masquerades as Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother and lures the little girl into his trap.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

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.

From Booklist

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

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 4 and up
  
• Hardcover: 32 pages
• Publisher: Barefoot Books (March 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1841486213
• ISBN-13: 978-1841486215
• Product Dimensions: 10.4 x 10.1 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,227,095 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Trip Down a Familiar Path with a Slightly Different Outcome, December 1, 2006

By 

Amy Graham (Scottsdale, AZ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Little Red Riding Hood (Paperback)

I must applaud another lovely rendition of the classic Little Red Riding Hood tale we have been given by Evetts-Secker and Ceccoli! This one is a pretty standard retelling of the story we've all grown up with...Little Red is the classic good girl whom no one really notices until she puts on that red cloak...she is unexceptional and there is nothign special about her, according to this version, prior to that. As a somewhat faceless archetypal good girl, she does as she's told (stay on the path, does what her elders tell her, ect...) and we find her, typically off to Grandma's house with a basket of fresh bread, new butter and sweet elderberry wine for her ailing grandmother.

Little Red, having promised to obey and return home well before dusk, sets out on her trip...not too long after she meets the wolf and according to this version, she knows nothing about wolves and greets him with uncertainty but also curiosity. It is at this point in the this retelling that the story gets interesting (from my perspective anyway), the wolf, after hearing that Little Red is off to visit grandma temps her to take the left-hand fork in the path and sample its pleasures (a field of lovely flowers and birds in song on a warm, sunny day). While Red is otherwise engaged, the wolf slips off and does the usual thing with Grandma and then takes her place. After sampling the pleasures of the other path, she returns to the correct path, and proceeds to break just about every rule she was initially given when she set out on her trip.

The story ends in the typical way...the Wolf eats Red, the Woodsman rescues Red and Grandma and they fill the Wolf's belly with sharp stones and sew it back up. The very end is just a little different from the watch out for strangers on the path message I've seen in most storybook retellings, in this version Red and Grandma sit down to feast together on the contents of the basket and Red shares with Granny the wonders she saw on the left-hand fork in the path and wonders whatever will happen should she meet another wolf out in the forest.

Overall, it's pretty tame but does offer some details that are different from what is usually presented and which are interesting for the adult reading but simple enough to not upset those parents who'd rather read their children sanitized versions of fairy tales. I give it a B+, the story is good, it's relatively clean (despite the eating of Granny and Red), and offers some interesting details that would make for interesting discussion regarding the seductive nature of the wolf and the pleasures of breaking the rules and going on a different path. The main drawback in my opinion is the artwork; I just don't care for this style. Done in pastels and soft earth tones in a rather stylized way, it strikes me as too soft. I think that's more a personal ascetic though. This version of Little Red Riding Hood is definitely worth a read!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Magical illustrations!, March 7, 2008

By 

wild child's mom - See all my reviews

This review is from: Little Red Riding Hood (Hardcover)

We all know the story of Little Red Riding Hood -- it's a classic and that's pretty much all there is to say about it. What really made it impossible for me to put the book back on the shelf -- or in fact out of my hand for the rest of the day -- are the absolutely magical illustrations. This book is art for children at it's best! The paintings are like beautiful music; the rendering of the figures and the way light is depicted is imaginative and poetic. At the same time the illustrations are very appropriate for small children, they are neither scary nor confusing, but rather of the stay-in-your-mind storytelling kind.