Little Red Riding Hood

Little Zoe,

What has the world come to? They re-wrote the good old fairy tales. They teach no lesson, and provoke no thought anymore.

You and I went to a bookstore last week and got you a colorful book titled In the Jungle, and two fairy tales - Hansel and Gretel and the Little Red Riding Hood.

In the Jungle tells the story of animal friends playing hide-and-seek. The drawings are big and colorful, but the text is minimal. When I read it to you, I elaborate on the images to make the story longer. You like looking at the pages. Hansel and Gretel takes the reader outside the comfort zone through a story of abandonment by one's own parents. I picked this story because it triggers questions beyond "what happens next" to "why" and "how come" these things happen.

I picked the Little Red Riding Hood because, well, because the store didn't have the original Cinderella story, and I wanted to buy at least three books and stay under $20. I picked the Little Red over other books, because it is fun, moderately suspenseful, and educational. But lo and behold! When I started reading it to you I couldn't believe my own ears! This was not the original story, but a crappy, naive, and useless adaptation. It was an epitome of modern day American taste where everything is simplified, fantasized, stripped from things that provoke thought or put people at emotional unease. Forget about wolfs being dangerous menaces. Little Red Riding Hood actually has two wolf cubs as pets. AS PETS! There is no confrontation between the big wolf and the Little Red Riding Hood. The wolf doesn't even want to eat the grandma. All he wants, is to eat a cookie shaped like the grandma. A COOKIE! What wolf eats a cookie? No lesson about trust and caution, no encouragement of exploration. It makes me angry to think of reading that book to a child. I'm mad that it got published. I was reading the story to you while you were breastfeeding. When I noticed how stupid it was, my voice went down. I felt I was lying to you, and damaging your potential to develop your intellect and grow as an individual. I will not read that book to you again. I feel bad because the colors and the drawings are pretty, and you might enjoy looking at them. I'll go back to the store and see if they carry the real story with nice pictures.

Love,

Mommy.