Little Red Riding Hood

Little Red Riding Hood is a children's fairy tale. The Brothers Grimm version is the most popular version and has inspired many films, plays, novels and poems.

Fast Facts

1. Earliest version written down by Charles Perrault
2. Appeared in Tales of Mother Goose in 1697
3. Themes: cannibalism, prostitution, sexual awakening, bodily cycles, feminine coming of age

Synopsis

Little Red Riding Hood is a story about a young girl who meets a "Big Bad Wolf" in the woods on her way to visit her sick grandmother. The wolf sends her off the beaten path and then races to grandmother's house, where he eats her grandmother and then dresses in her clothing to trick the girl when she arrives.

Critical Reception

• "All senses are stimulated. Readers can smell the chicken soup simmering in the cozy kitchen, taste the snowflakes, hear the crunching of the snow and the chopping of the woodsman and feel the peaceful crisp cold of the forest." - Commonsense Media

Moral of the Story

• "From this story one learns that children, especially young lasses, pretty, courteous and well-bred, do very wrong to listen to strangers, And it is not an unheard thing if the Wolf is thereby provided with his dinner. I say Wolf, for all wolves are not of the same sort; there is one kind with an amenable disposition — neither noisy, nor hateful, nor angry, but tame, obliging and gentle, following the young maids in the streets, even into their homes. Alas! Who does not know that these gentle wolves are of all such creatures the most dangerous!" - Charles Perrault

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