Little Red: A Favourite Tale with a Twist

Little Red: A Favourite Tale with a Twist by Lynn Roberts is a funny fairy tale for 6 year olds where Little Red Riding Hood is a boy called Thomas.

What happens

Nobody seems quite sure why everyone calls Thomas Little Red. His parents run a cosy inn that's famous for its sweet ginger beer. Every week he takes Grandma a basket of treats and a whole week's worth of the stuff.

You know the rest. Or you think you do.

His mum warns him never to leave the path. He leaves the path (only for a moment, to pick some red apples for Grandma). And a wolf is watching the whole time.

Here's where it starts to change. Little Red takes off his much-loved red coat so it won't tear on a prickly bush, and the wolf runs off with it. Grandma is very, very shortsighted. So when a red coat knocks at her door, she invites it in for cake.

The famous big eyes, big ears and big teeth are all still there, and your reader will probably want to join in. But Little Red has a much better idea than being eaten, and it has everything to do with that ginger beer. The ending is gloriously rude, and it'll get a big laugh.

The setting is old-fashioned too, with an inn full of travellers telling tales about dashing highwaymen and fearsome wolves.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

The wolf really does swallow Grandma whole, in one gulp. It's all played for laughs and nobody comes to harm in the end, but a very little one who takes wolves seriously might want a hand to hold at that bit.

It's short and it reads aloud beautifully. Your reader will have great fun spotting everything that's different this time, especially if they know the old story off by heart.

What to read next

If they enjoy it, Lynn Roberts does the same trick again in Sleeping Beauty: A Mid-century Fairy Tale, where a girl who loves robots and space books has no idea she's living under a spell.