Have You Heard of the Little Red Wolf? (Book Review)

 The Little Red Wolf by Amémie Fléchais (illustrator), Andrea Colvin (editor), and Jeremy Melloul (translator) is a darker twist on the Little Red Riding Hood tale we grew up with. I love all sorts of adaptations of the fairy tales I grew up with. Little Red Riding Hood was one of my favorites. The Little Red Wolf is an eighty page children's book, and if you have a stubborn child reader at home you may have to read it with them to get them to finish it. The tale is told from the point of view of a small wolf in a riding hood. The antagonists are the humans. The small wolf was told that there was once a very nice human woman who treated the wolves so well before the woman's husband killed her as a mistake and blamed the wolves. The small wolf's parents warned him away from all humans, but when he needed help he followed what he considered to be a nice human girl. She told him a dark tale she was told by her father as they walked to her house. The story seems to be similar to the one the wolf's parents told him but at the same time very different. Once they get to the girl's house things take a very dark turn. The wolf is distractible, trusting, and naive whereas the human girl is devious, good storyteller, and a liar. They are very believable characters even for being so young. 

I was fully enamored with the book, but that's not a surprise at all since I love most fairy tale adaptations and love when humans are portrayed as the antagonists. I found the book to be engaging and so I loved hearing that it got translated. I'm curious if it was first published in English. I couldn't find out much on that. I know ships worldwide. I think the best way I can recommend this book is to tell you how my niece, who is not a reader, reacted to the book. She was staying with me a couple years ago for one month, and it was my job to get her to read for her homework. She was seven years old then. I tried to get her interested in The Little Red Wolf because I don't have a lot of children's books in my house, and she wasn't picking up any at school. One day we made an agreement to read every other page together. She really got into it to the point that she didn't mind reading the long pages. I think the biggest selling point is that after she reads the book she has to write how many pages she's read. She was shocked that we had read eighty pages together because it seemed shorter to her.