Little Red Riding Hood

Montresor, Beni

ISBN 10: 0385412134 ISBN 13: 9780385412131

Publisher: Doubleday Books for Young Readers, 1991

Synopsis

A little girl on her way to visit her grandmother meets a hungry wolf in the forest

About this title

About the Author:

Charles Perrault (12 January 1628 – 16 May 1703) was a French author considered the founder of the modern fairy tale.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 4 Up-- From the cover illustration, which both descends from and pays tribute to Gustave Dore's wood engraving of Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf, to the melancholy black endpapers, Montresor has provided a reinterpretation that is both astonishing and esoteric. Although Montresor chooses to omit it, Perrault himself appended a highly didactic moral in verse. In it he warns ". . . pretty girls, who're bred as pure as pearls,. . . they may serve one day as feast for a wolf or other beast." It is the subtext and cryptic nature of the tale that Montresor enlarges and underscores masterfully. In disturbing illustrations heavily overlaid with black, he piles up images and scenes that will haunt readers: a graceful prepubescent Red Riding Hood who is watched silently by the town's women and girls, voyeurs at some obscure rite of passage; the encounter with the beguiling, dapper wolf; the palpable pause as Red Riding Hood stands, uncertain at the dark forbidding threshold of Grandmother's house; the wolf greedily devouring Red Riding Hood head first; three wordless illustrations following the end of the text in which the girl floats cruciformly, transformed and serene, within the distended belly of the wolf--seemingly ready for rebirth, absorbed into the unending chain of reproduction. While Montresor offers an ostensibly straightforward text, he has altered Perrault's original intent both by omitting the concluding moral and by silhouetting the figure of the Grimms's hunter on the final plate. His daring, enigmatic illustrations, saturated with layers of mysterious symbolism, are clearly his vehicle for reinterpretation. It is difficult to assign an appropriate age for this work, but it clearly does not belong on the picture-book shelves. Large folklore collections should consider this provocative version that will reward with endless possibilities for study, discussion, and comparison. --Kate McClelland, Perrot Memorial Library, Greenwich, CT
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Doubleday Books for Young Readers
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0385412134
• ISBN 13: 9780385412131
• Binding: Library Binding
• Number of pages: 32