Little Red Riding Hood

Little Red Riding Hood - Retold and Illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman

1984 Caldecott Honor Book

When selecting traditional stories to read (folktales, myths, legends, etc), I decided to choose one story with which I was familiar, one that I was not and a familiar story which has variations in many cultures.  For the story with which I am familiar, I choose Trina Schart Hyman's version of Little Red Riding Hood.

The reason that I selected this version of the story was my immediate reaction to the illustrations.  The watercolor images are lush, highly detailed and provide the perfect Old World atmosphere to the book.   Each page is framed by a boxed border featuring flowers, small prints and quilt blocks, similar to the details that one would find on European Country style furniture and illustrations, lending a sense of place and history to the story.

Details in the paintings are wonderful.  Little Red Riding Hood is shown as quite small in comparison to the adults, portraying her as very young (maybe 4 or 5, as opposed to the characterization of her being around 12 that I've seen in other versions).  We know that she is very young not just from her size, but the details of the images of her.  Her feet are often shown turned in or awkwardly placed, as if she is uncertain and unconfident.  The artist shows her with wide, innocent eyes and sometimes, with a finger in her mouth. The reader knows from these details that this is a person who will be easily taken in and will not be able to defend herself.

We also know that the wolf is an evil character from our first sighting of him.  While the rest of the illustrations are bright and full, the wolf is gray and lean, a stark contrast.  Little Red Riding Hood does not recognize him as bad immediately, however.  She is shown as watching him with big eyes which are focused on him, showing her as entranced by him.  He easily strays her from her path to Grandmas by mentioning the flowers of the forest.  When she goes to pick flowers, he dashes off to Grandma's and, before Grandma knows what is happening, he eats her whole.

As Little Red Riding Hood approaches the cottage, she knows that something is the matter.  Everything in the house looks fine (as we see from the illustrations), but, as the text and her eyes tell us, something is not.  As she asks Grandma about the changes in her appearance, her hand is to her mouth and one foot is stepping backwards.  Before she can act on her fright, she also is eaten whole.  Luckily, the huntsman comes along and rescues both of them from the wolf.  The huntsman is painted as huge, at least a foot and a half taller than Grandma, as would be appropriate for a savior.

The story is much how I remember it, though I now recognize the features that make it a classic folktale.  The world of the story is magical, in which animals talk and a large wolf can eat a whole person in one bite (and they escape unscathed!).  There is also a moral element to the story - none of this would have happened if Little Red Riding Hood had only listened to her mother and not strayed from her journey to Grandma's house.  In the future, she will listen to her mother.  However, she finds comfort that, through the entire ordeal, she remembered her manners!

In Kathleen Horning's book on Children's Literature, From Cover to Cover: Evaluating and Reviewing Children's Books, she points out that there is a great deal of variation in the degree to which original sources are credited in adaptations of traditional stories.  Keeping this in mind, I noted that the only credit given to a previous source is on the copyright page, in the Library of Congress headings that list "Grimm, Jacob. 1785-1863. Rotkappchen." This is unfortunate, as I believe that it is greatly helpful to know the background of the original story.  While I've read Little Red Riding Hood previously, I do not know what the original story contained.  Are the versions that I've read (including this one) softened, Americanized or otherwise changed for marketing reasons?  It would be useful to be able to make a judgement using the original story as a baseline.