cover image Red Riding Hood

Red Riding Hood

Christopher Coady. Dutton Books, $15 (32pp) ISBN 978-0-525-44896-9

In a stylish debut, Coady draws on one of the bleaker versions of this classic fairy tale for artistic inspiration. Like Beni Montresor's recent retelling (Children's Forecasts, Sept. 27, 1991), Coady's honors the Perrault tradition, which provides no woodcutter to save the heroine and her grandmother from the belly of the wolf. Here, the cautionary tale serves as handmaiden to the artist's visionary approach, which is marked by an extraordinarily sophisticated use of light and shadow and accentuated with intriguing, conspicuous brushwork. These characters inhabit a dreamy, twilight world that teeters on the edge of nightmare, but Coady judiciously leaves the horror of his protagonist's fate to the readers' imaginations. Instead, he focuses on a few spare details--the red cloak abandoned on the bed, grandmother's spectacles tossed aside on the floor--that in no way diminish the power or pathos of the final scene. (One caveat: because of the artwork's overall darkness, the text is somewhat difficult to read.) Though the read-aloud set may prefer a kinder, more humane version of the tale, adults and older children will find this variation--and Coady's forceful vision--satisfyingly chilling. All ages. (May)