Little Red Riding Hood

This is a beautifully illustrated and traditional retelling of Red Riding Hood. This is a must have for your School Library. The wintery forrest scenes make me think that it would make a great holiday gift as well!

The illustrations in this book are just lovely. This version might be a little much for very young readers (the wolf eats granny and the woodsman has to cut her out), but fans of old-fashioned classics should add this to their children's bookshelves.

I have poured over picture book after picture book trying to find classic tales that were not watered down, facetious tongue-in-cheek retellings of tales that were meant to disturb and teach. This is a beautiful telling of Little Red Riding Hood. I get so tired of cartoon-y illustrations or the new computer-generated "art". This is a beautifully painted story with the classic gore so needed in a folk/fairy tale. I won't go into the morals of letting children watch TV, but then not allow them to experience the triumph of good over evil in fairy tales, but I will say that children need this kind of dramatic resolution in a story. Loved this book!

You can appreciate a person's craft and talent without ever really appreciating their style. I mean, no one is ever going to say that Jerry Pinkney isn't one of the most talented artists working in the field of picture books today. No one. Still, I've always enjoyed the man's ideas far more than his actual products. I eventually decided that this was because my eyes prefer thick bold lines in children's books, whereas Mr. Pinkney more of the soft sketchy lines and details type. Due to the prolific nature of his work, as a children's librarian I've recommended and run into a fair amount of Pinkney titles without ever really finding one I could call my favorite. Maybe Sam and the Tigers (an alternative version of Little Black Sambo) but even that seemed a better idea than final product. Then I ran across his "Little Red Riding Hood". I can't really pinpoint why I like this book so much more than his previous works. It's not as if his style has changed a whit. He hasn't done anything significantly different with this tale. The story is the classic version we've all learned at some point, but set against an entirely new season and including some of the original tale's darker elements. Squeamish parents beware. Jerry Pinkney is not afraid to go to original source material if he has to. You know the drill. There was once a little girl whose mother made her a brilliant red cloak, giving her the titular nickname we've all grown to know and love. One winter's day her grandmother comes down with a cold, so Little Red is sent off to take her some warm food. On the way she meets a charming wolf that persuades her to ignore her mother's advice and gather some firewood for her granny. Then the wolf eats the grandmother, does the standard "what big eyes you have bit", and swallows up Little Red to boot. Fortunately a hunter hears the wolf's acoustically impressive snores, kills the furry creature, frees the two women from its stomach, and a happy ending is had by all. The end. I had a woman in my library the other day looking for good versions of The Three Little Pigs. When I pulled four or five different styles, she was horrified to find that in many of these books the pigs either get eaten or end up eating the wolf at the end. So too will a certain strain of parent be shocked at the story found in this fairy tale. Wait... the wolf actually EATS Little Red and her grandmother? And a woodsman cuts them out of the stomach? In a children's book??? But of course they are. In fact, if you want to make a case for this book to the easily shocked (and fairy tale ignorant) parents who encounter it, mention that Pinkney has actually softened the tale a little. He could have included the detail where the grandmother sews stones into the wolf's belly and it crawls away to starve to death. Instead, this version simply has the woodcutter kill the wolf and free the people in its belly. The illustrations, for their part, display these scenes wit