By Toby Forward
The wolf swears he was Grandma's handyman, that he's a vegetarian, and that everything you heard about Little Red Riding Hood is a slander he intends to clear up.
The wolf would like a word. He wasn't lurking, he was working. He did odd jobs for Grandma, fixed her roof, ran her errands, and he'd been doing it for years, and did anybody thank him? Then the girl in the red hood starts turning up every week with a basket and suddenly he's the one nobody has time for. He's a vegetarian, by the way. He was out picking herbs when he saw Red coming, so naturally he took the shortcut to warn Grandma, and he was only helping her reach a nice dress down when she got a teeny tiny bump on the head that knocked her cold, and honestly, what was he supposed to do? He put her somewhere safe. He wore the nightie because it was cold. It all just looked bad. The last page has him walking off down the road with a bundle on a stick, a bandage where most of his tail used to be, one eye on you, asking would I lie to you, and offering his card in case you've got any odd jobs.
The evidence here is in the pictures, not the words, and that's the reason to reach for this one over the other wolf retellings. Izhar Cohen paints the wolf exactly as the wolf describes himself, an honest working man in a waistcoat, and then leaves things around the edges of the page that don't match a word he's saying. A child who only listens gets a sad story about a misunderstood handyman. A child who looks catches him, and nobody has to point it out. It's slyer than it first looks, because this wolf is a much better liar than the one from the three pigs, and he never admits a thing. Your child has to convict him with no confession to go on, working from the pictures alone. Mine found that genuinely satisfying.