Little Red Riding Hood
After Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, retold gently · About 6 min aloud · A StoryBeam retelling
For the grown-up reading alongThe what-big-eyes game is all here. In our telling Grandma is safely out picking mint when the wolf arrives, so nobody is swallowed, and the wolf leaves through the window when the woodcutter knocks. The quiet lesson about strangers on the path stays in.
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Little Red Riding Hood, in full
Once upon a time there was a girl who had a hooded cloak the color of summer strawberries. Her grandmother had sewn it for her, and she loved it so much that she wore it everywhere, up hills and down stairs and once, briefly, in the bath. And so everyone called her Little Red Riding Hood.
One morning her mother packed a basket with fresh bread, a pot of butter, and a lemon cake, and said, "Grandma has a cold. Take this to her cottage, there and back, and remember: stay on the path, and save your chatting for people you know."
"Stay on the path, save my chatting," said Little Red Riding Hood, and off she went into the woods, where the light came down green and gold between the leaves.
She had not gone far when a wolf stepped out from behind an oak tree, wearing the kind of smile that has too many teeth in it.
"Good morning, little miss," said the wolf, smooth as syrup. "And where might you be going with that delicious… I mean, delightful basket?"
Now, Little Red Riding Hood had never met a wolf before, and she remembered her mother's words a moment too late. "To my grandma's cottage," she said, "past the mill and under the three tall pines." And then she pressed her lips together, because that was already more chatting than the rule allowed.
"Charming," said the wolf. "Do notice the flowers as you go. A whole meadow of them, just off the path. Grandmothers adore flowers."
And the wolf bowed and trotted away, and the moment the trees hid him, he RAN, the short way, the fast way, straight for the cottage past the mill.
Little Red Riding Hood looked at the meadow. The flowers did look lovely. But she heard her mother's voice in her head, stay on the path, and she stayed on it, every step, though she walked a little quicker now, because something about that smile had made the back of her neck prickle.
At the cottage, the wolf knocked: knock, knock.
No one answered. For here is the luck of the whole day: Grandma's cold was already better, and she had gone out the back door to pick mint for her tea, humming, with her shawl about her shoulders.
The wolf let himself in. He put on Grandma's spare nightcap, wriggled under the quilt, and pulled it up to his nose, chuckling a wolfish chuckle. A whole basket of bread and butter and cake, he thought, delivered right to the bed. And maybe the girl for pudding.
Soon came a tap at the door.
"Grandma, it's me," called Little Red Riding Hood.
"Come in, dearie," said the wolf, in a voice like Grandma's, if Grandma had swallowed a growl.
Little Red Riding Hood came in and set down the basket. She looked at the figure in the bed, and she frowned a small frown. Something was different today.
"Why, Grandma," she said, "what big ears you have."
"All the better to hear you with, my dear," said the wolf.
"And Grandma, what big eyes you have."
"All the better to see you with, my dear."
"And Grandma," said Little Red Riding Hood, taking one careful step backward toward the door, because her neck was prickling again and this time she listened to it, "what big TEETH you have."
"All the better to—"
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK.
It was the woodcutter, come to stack Grandma's firewood, with an axe over his shoulder and shoulders like a doorway. "Morning!" he boomed. "Where would you like the logs?"
The wolf did not wait to answer. He shot out of the bed, nightcap and all, took one look at the woodcutter's shoulders, and went straight through the open window in a tangle of quilt, and away through the trees, and he did not stop running until the woods were two woods behind him. The nightcap was never seen again. Some say a magpie wears it.
And just then, in through the back door came Grandma with her bunch of mint, to find her quilt on the floor, a woodcutter at the front door, and her favorite person in the world standing in the middle of it all.
Well. The story was told three times over lemon cake, and got better each time. The woodcutter fitted a shiny new latch to the door before he left. And Little Red Riding Hood stayed the whole afternoon, and had mint tea with two sugars.
"You kept to the path," said Grandma, tucking a strawberry-red hood behind her ear, "and you trusted your prickle when the smile was wrong. That is exactly as much cleverness as a person needs."
As for the wolf, he decided that cottages were more trouble than they looked, and took up eating blackberries, which never ask questions and never have woodcutters.
For grown-ups
After the last page
Keep it going — ask together:
- What was the prickle on Red's neck trying to tell her?
- Why do we save chatting for people we know?
Asking a question or two after a story is "dialogic reading" — one of the best-evidenced boosts to early language. More on how we choose books in Parent Corner.