Our Principal Is a Wolf!

Stephanie Calmenson's Our Principal Is a Wolf is a very silly school story for 6 year olds about a wolf who turns up at school wearing the principal's clothes.

What happens

Mr Bundy is a lovely head teacher. He cycles in whatever the weather, he irons his handkerchiefs, and the whole school has just clubbed together to buy him a shiny red poncho for his fifth anniversary.

Then his assistant principal goes down with a dreadful cold. So Mr Bundy gets up extra early, makes her a pot of soup and sets off through the woods to deliver it.

Which is where he meets a very hairy, very bearded man who suggests he stop and pick some flowers first, and asks him exactly where she lives.

Does Mr Bundy think anything of the long nose and the big teeth? He notices them. He just can't quite put his finger on it.

Yes. It's Little Red Riding Hood, with a head teacher in the red cape.

The book knows that you know, and that's the whole joke. Every beat lands precisely where a six year old is expecting it, big eyes and big teeth included. Then the wolf puts on Mr Bundy's clothes, slicks his fur down with hair gel and cycles to school for dessert.

Where he gets sidetracked. A little girl in the kindergarten class asks him to read a story, and the story she hands him is Little Red Riding Hood.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

The assistant principal in one bite, the head teacher in another, soup and flowers and all. It's fairy-tale eating, the sort you come back out of, and it's played entirely for laughs. But it's two adults gone by chapter three, so if your reader is on the little side and takes things at face value, that's the bit to think about.

Otherwise it's an easy one. Five short chapters, with a word list at the back for the harder words like bedraggled and allegiance, which is handy for a reader who's just moved up from picture books.

What to read next

If you've got a reader who enjoys a familiar story being messed about with, Prince Not-So Charming is also in the library. Carlos is heir to the Faraway Kingdom and would very much rather be a jester, which his parents are not going to take well.