Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Lon Po Po by Ed Young

This was a fun discovery. Lon Po Po is, as you can see, a Chinese variant of Little Red. Three sisters are left at home when granny comes calling--except it's really Lon Po Po, the wolf, pretending to be granny in order to eat the girls. Fortunately the eldest sister, Shang, figures out the ploy, and the girls in their turn trick the wolf into a tree and kill him. (Poor wolf! Oh, wait, he was going to eat them...)

Young doesn't pull his punches in this retelling, from the dark and elegant artwork to the graphic nature of the story (much like the version we are familiar with, in the Grimm version). It's definitely one to check out, for the artwork alone. Of course the fairy tale component makes this Caldecott winner extra desirable for my library....


1 comment:

  1. OMG--I LOVED this book as a little girl. I had completely forgotten about it until now. Those ginkgo nuts are a killer.

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