Little Red Riding Hood Is a Lot More Clever in Lon Po Po

I've read many versions of Little Red Riding Hood, and always a foolish girl allows herself to be tricked by a cunning wolf and nearly loses her life as a result. In Ed Young's Lon Po Po: A Red-Riding Hood Story From China, the story's protagonist is quite a bit more clever than usual, and it might be said that her mother is too, since she takes on the job of visiting Grandma herself rather than telling her daughter to risk the journey. Staying home, one assumes, would be a lot safer. But it isn't without its perils.

In this version, Red's counterpart is a girl named Shang, who has no hood but does wear a reddish-purple dress. She is the eldest of three, all girls. Tao and Paotze, dressed in blue and green, are rather like the first two pigs in the story of the three little pigs. They are quickly taken in by the trickery of Lon Po Po, the wolf who has come to the door posing as their grandmother, and must rely on the clever Shang to get them out of trouble. Fortunately, she has already worked out a plan...

The Caldecott-winning illustrations in this book are remarkable. Created with watercolors and pastels, they have a soft, shadowy look about them, accentuating the sneakiness of both Lon Po Po and Shang. Blue and green are much more prominent colors than red, blending together in backgrounds evocative of life and creation. Red is only incorporated prominently into the background twice: when Shang first speaks to the wolf in disguise, and when she finally enacts her plan against him.

One of the most interesting elements of the paintings is the fact that each two-page spread contains a single illustration, but it is shown with between two and four panels. In most cases, it's one large panel filling one page and two skinner panels filling another. During the story's climax, there are a few back-to-back, full-page illustrations that depict different scenes, but for the most part, we're just having our attention called to separate portions of the picture. Often, the children are in one panel and the wolf in another, creating a sense of separation that is at once comforting and ominous. For now, the children are safe; will they be able to stay just out of the wolf's grasp?

This has less in common with the typical Red Riding Hood story than I expected, mostly because Shang is such a different sort of character. She's more like Ananse, the weakling who defeats enemies with his cleverness, than the foolish little girl who learns too late the value of obeying her mother's directives. Shang needs no huntsman to come and liberate her from the wolf's clutches. She manages perfectly well on her own, making Lon Po Po, like the Chinese legend of Mulan, the female warrior in disguise, a positive story of self-reliance, especially for girls.