Not Again, Red Riding Hood!

An imaginative ‘sequel’ to the traditional tale; this time Red Riding Hood is stalked by the brother of the original wolf while she wends her way to her Dad with ten freshly baked cookies in her basket. En route she meets familiar characters from other well-known tales: Rapunzel, The Three Bears, The Billy Goats Gruff. Each meeting leaves her with fewer cookies in her basket, as the characters are all hungry. Clearly, a lot of thought has been given to the illustrative content in this book because, aside from the counting and calculations (she had 9 cookies in her basket and gave 3 away), there are plenty of opportunities to notice and comment on particular shapes and patterns throughout. Stripes, spirals, dots and squares abound in the bold illustrations in bright, strong colours. The triangular shaped cookies are decorated with what look like Smarties (a different number of these for each cookie, of course); the path Red Riding Hood takes looks just like her cat’s stripey tail at the beginning of the story. These sorts of details engage children’s interest over many retellings. It is a lovely book to read aloud – I tried it with a Year 3 class who enjoyed joining in with the repeating refrain, not least because of the newly learned word ‘ordeal’: ‘It’s good to see you out again, so soon after your terrible ordeal with that nasty wolf.’ As a dual text, this is well-produced in clear, well-sized fonts for Hindi and English. (Available in 22 dual language editions, and also as a big book, an audio CD, and a board game.)