Little Red Riding Hood has never been one of my favorite fairy tales. When I was a small kid, I much preferred the stories of the princesses with the beautiful dresses (Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty) or the tales of the girls who went out on adventures and rescued their brothers or princes (East o’ the Sun, West o’ the Moon, The Seven Swans, though calling “weaving together nettle shirts” an adventure of any sort is probably a bit much). Little Red Riding Hood had a bright red hood, but that was about it for the clothing, and then a wolf ate her, and then someone else shot the wolf. Not really my sort of story.
As a grownup, I could appreciate the warning in the tale from Perrault and the Grimms. But appreciating the warning didn’t necessarily make me value the tale all that much.
Still, something about the story nagged at me – enough that I’ve ended up using it as inspiration for a poem or short story or two. This is the latest, The Wolf, up at Daily Science Fiction today. Enjoy!
