The Girl in Red

Gr 7 Up—Employing the hyperrealistic style used in his controversial Holocaust picture book, Rose Blanche (Creative Editions, 1985), Innocenti here conjures a menacing forest for Little Red Riding Hood. The path in this modern-day, urban setting is surrounded with litter, graffiti, homeless people, traffic jams, fast food, and a crime scene. Sophia's journey is narrated by a knitting granny who appears before the title page amid a group of children. Frisch's ominous text, placed within garish red or gray blocks, sets the tone: "Stories are like the skies. They can change, bring surprises, catch you without a coat. Look up all you want, but you never really know what's coming." The heart of the forest is a shopping mall. Catatonic shoppers are visually assaulted with signs of garters and guns, bingo and bling; stained-glass windows feature Micky Mouse and seductively posed women. The protagonist halts before a toy-filled "window of wonders" and then, lost, falters in a dark alley filled with punks. In a disturbing sequence, she is "rescued" by "a smiling hunter" (a biker, dressed in black, who is later revealed to be the wolf). The story projects a sense of foreboding and terror, and the first of two endings moves the children in the framing story to tears; a "happy" version is unconvincingly appended. By removing the filter of folklore and pulling the archetypal dangers into the present without a sense of safety anywhere, author and illustrator have created a profoundly unsettling narrative that may have some appeal to urban teens.—Wendy Lukehart, Washington DC Public Library