Lon Po Po: A Red-Riding Hood Story from China

When a mother leaves her three daughters, Shang, Tao, and Paotze, alone at home to visit their own grandmother, a wolf disguises himself as that grandmother, whom the girls call Po Po, and talks his way inside the house at nightfall. The eldest sister, Shang, grows suspicious of the visitor's rough voice and strange, hairy hands, and rather than confronting the wolf directly, she invents a reason to lure him outside to a gingko tree, telling him its nuts grant immortality. Once all three girls are safely up in the branches, they trick the wolf into climbing into a basket meant to hoist the nuts, then haul him up and drop him, again and again, until he falls to his death and shatters on the ground below; the sisters wait out the rest of the night safely in the tree and welcome their mother home unharmed at dawn.

Ed Young, who translated the tale himself from a Chinese oral tradition, illustrates it in pastel and watercolor kept deliberately dark and shadowed, dividing many spreads into three vertical panels that build tension by controlling exactly how much of the wolf a reader can see at once.

The story carries genuine menace, closer to a real thriller than a softened bedtime tale, and it suits five to nine year olds who can handle a wolf that is actually dangerous rather than merely silly; the shadowy, panel divided art rewards a slow, careful reading rather than a quick one. Unlike the more familiar European tale, the children here save themselves entirely through their own wit rather than waiting on a passing woodsman, a difference many young listeners notice and like on their own.