“Cloaked in Red” by Vivian Vande Velde
Genre: Young Adult Fiction, Short Story collection, Fantasy
Source: Bought
Summary from Goodreads:
So you think know the story of Little Red Riding Hood, the girl with the unfortunate name and the inability to tell the difference between her grandmother and a member of a different species? Well, then, try your hand at answering these questions:
-Which character (not including Little Red herself) is the most fashion challenged?
-Who (not including the wolf) is the scariest?
-Who (not including Granny) is the most easily scared?
-Who is the strangest? (Notice we’re not “not including” anyone, because they’re all a little off.)
-Who (no fair saying “the author”) has stuffing for brains?
Vivian Vande Velde has taken eight new looks at one of the world’s most beloved (and mixed-up) stories. You may never look at fairy tales in quite the same way again.
Like with any short story collection some stories were better than others. I’ll briefly talk about each story so don’t read on if you don’t want too many spoilers.
- The Red Cloak– Interesting twist for the woodcutter to be bad.
- The Red Riding Hood Doll– Very odd. It’s the furthest from the original story.
- Little Red Riding Hood’s Family– The paranormal aspect could have been cool but I didn’t like it very much. It felt too silly.
- Granny and the Wolf– This was a bit funny. I enjoy those stories where there’s too many secrets going on and you have to make sure people don’t know about the other people.
- Deems the Wood Gatherer– I loved how it had other fairy tales in it. I guess fairy tales all take place in the same woods.
- Why Willy and His Brother Won’t Ever Amount to Anything– Yet another story that twists the original tale quite a bit. The Grimm brothers were a fun addition.
- The Little Red Headache– Yay this story has the wolf trying to be the good guy.
- Little Red Riding Hood’s Little Red Riding Hood– I liked that the red riding hood was a character in this story. It’s pretty amusing to read about a hood trying to save the day. Of course, Little Red is oblivious to it all.
The bottom line? Amusing. I’d like to read more books like this with other fairy tales.
The Cheap Reader 
This is great! I just finished Sisters Red and think I’m gonna do Little Red Riding Hood at some point on my Featured Fairy Tales. I’ll definitely have to list this book under “retellings” as well as link your post about it! This one sounds pretty different but interesting!
Oooh I look forward to that! I just love retellings. 🙂
You might look at her other books. I *think* she has some other retelling books.
Those sound like fun. I read another book by that author and it was great, about getting stuck in a video game. I will have to check this book out. Thanks! 🙂
Oooh that sounds very interesting!
Hope you enjoy this book.
This sounds like a fun read, reminds me of some short story collections I loved as a teenager and younger adult. Also with the kick-ass/goth Little Red Riding hood in the TV series “once upon a time” I think Red might be on a popularity rise. I might take a look at this book, I do like retelling of familiar stories. Thanks for the review
I love fairy tale re-tellings, so this is definitely going on my to-read list 🙂
Hope you have fun with it when you read it!