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

Translated & Illustrated by: Ed Young

Lon Po Po is a Chinese version of the classic fairy tale, Little Red Riding Hood. The story is very similar though it does have some slight differences, of course. Instead of Little Red Riding Hood venturing to Grandma's house, a wolf comes knocking at the home of three little girls while their mother is on her way to see the girls' grandmother. I don't want to give away too much, though I will say there is a happy ending.

The illustrations in this story are watercolors and pastels. Young uses light and dark colors which provides the reader with spectacular pictures of the wolf. Young uses a technique called panel art. Many of the illustrations are in long, skinny frames, often two panels on the same page. I first thought about it feeling like a movie where the reader only sees the important parts. Since there is framing, there is much "white" space not used on the page. I figured if an illustrator is not going to fill up the entire page with a picture, there must be a good reason. I think it gives the reader the idea that what is in the long, slender panel is what the illustrator wants to call our attention to. There are some pages with all one illustration in a frame-no paneling. I noticed that the full-framed illustrations happen around the height, or action, of the story. Readers get excited because they are seeing more on the page than in the rest of the story.

This version of Little Red Riding Hood is different from what I've read in the past. It's very dark and the pictures are not always very clear. That makes this version even more magical, majestic even.