Product Description

This whimsical take on Little Red Riding Hood brings new life to an old favorite.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #296641 in Books
• Published on: 2000-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 32 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780805064834
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
This Southwestern version of Little Red Riding Hood features a tomboyish main character, a wolf as sleazy as any streetcorner lothario and a distinct self-defense theme. Lowell's (The Three Little Javelinas) outwardly tough Little Red wears a sheriff's badge and shoots rattlesnakes with her slingshot. However, she's intimidated by her aggressor, who steps from behind a cactus and blocks her path ("She didn't want to talk to him, but she'd been raised to be polite"). Later, as Little Red flees the wolf in Grandma's house, Grandma bursts into the bedroom with an ax (she has been chopping wood). Together the two frontierswomen chase the wolf away, and the tale ends on an up-to-date empowerment note: " 'Now, Red, have you learned your lesson?' asked Grandma. 'Yep. A girl's gotta stick up for herself,' said Little Red." Cecil (Baby's Breakfast) contributes flat, angular gouache illustrations of desert scenes. He fills thin black outlines with coloring-book precision, in shades of sunset orange, oversaturated yellow and green. His light-gray wolf towers over the thin and frightened Little Red, playing up the tension Lowell builds into the text before she defuses it with Grandma's 10-gallon talk: "That yellow-bellied, snake-blooded, skunk-eyed, rancid son of a parallelogram!... This time he picked the wrong grandma." Ages 5-8.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Ages 5^-8. Little Red Riding Hood gets a Wild West twist in a funny version of the familiar tale. This sticks pretty close to the plot, but with a tall-tale twang to the telling and, naturally, a most favorable ending in which Grandma comes in and saves Little Red. Pure desert colors outlined in ink have a cartoon edge that is full of humor: Grandma, Little Red, and the cattle chasing the nightgown-bedecked wolf into the desert is particularly camp. The book's size and design make this a good choice for story hour; older kids will enjoy it, too. Ilene Cooper

From Kirkus Reviews
``Once upon a ranch'' is how Lowell begins her enjoyable twist on the story of Little Red Riding Hood, starring a brave heroine who needs no lesson in self-reliance. First seen aiming a slingshot at a deadly snake, Little Red is instructed to take food to her sick grandmother. In the desert, she encounters the wolf, who is wearing a cowboy hat ``three shades blacker than a locomotive,'' and asks too many oily questions: ``What's your name, honey?'' and ``Where are you going, sugar? . . . Why not take a little ride with me?'' Little Red gives him the slip, only to rediscover him masquerading as her grandmother in the old woman's own bed. The wolf snatches her, but Grandma appears brandishing first an ax and then a shotgun to chase the villain off, complaining indignantly all the while: ``Breaking into my house! . . . Getting fleas in my bed!'' These two no-nonsense characters, with stick legs and huge cowboy boots, happily recap the victory while sitting on a fence munching sandwiches. There is humor in the pictures, with snakes among the cacti. The desert colors--mostly yellow, orange, and green--are painted in flat blocks of color in effective compositions that are deceptively simple while enhancing each scene's mood, whether pastoral or fearsome. A merry success, this Wild West fairy tale makes other versions look limp by comparison. (Picture book. 5-8) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

This is not your grandma's "Little Red Riding Hood!"
Far from the thoughtless, shrinking-violet waif-girl of older European tales, the red-headed, red-hatted Little Red of this fairy tale is a rootin' tootin' pre-feminist with a pistol for a granny. Our young cowgirl recognizes the Big Bad Wolf for the baddie he is but she was taught, in proper Texas tradition, to be polite to strangers....Granny and Little Red outsmart ol' Big Bad and hang out afterward to chew the fat about how girls can look after themselves. Hilariously illustrated and with authentic Wild West language, this tall tale will steal your heart!

The Greatest Book
This book is WONDERFUL! I like it a lot because it made us laugh! It had good pictures and they made us feel happy. It is a good book. "This book reminded me of when I went to a farm," Yasmin said. We want other kids to read this book because they will like it too.

A Contemporary Western "Red"
An American Southwest setting for the classic "Little Red Riding Hood" tale. Red's cowboy hat replaces Red's hood and the rest is literary history. Great illustrations of the Southwest and a right-on grandma from strong American pioneer stock: "That yellow-bellied, snake-blooded, skunk-eyed, rancid son of a parallelogram! . . . This time he picked the wrong grandma".