Lon Po Po

Lon Po Po is the Chinese version of Little Red Riding Hood. It is translated and illustrated by Ed Young. It is a fairy tale and is appropriate for grades K-3.
Lon Po Po is a story based closely off of the story of Little Red Riding, but with some key changes. A chinese mother of three children leaves their home one day to go and visit the children's grandmother for her birthday. The three sibling promise to be good and lock the door after their mother leaves. Soon after there is a knock at the door and the children are suprised to hear their Po Po or Grandmother outside the door. They figure it is ok to let in their grandmother and they open the door. What they don't realize is that it isn't their grandmother outside, but a wolf trying to trick them. As soon as they open the door the wolf blows out their candle so that the children cannot see that it is really a wolf. The children and the wolf, who they think is their grandmother soon get into bed and the children become curious about their granmothers appearance. The wolf has a tail and sharp claws and just like in Little Red Riding Hood, the wolf makes up excuses for these things. When the oldest child, Shang lights a candle, she gets a glimpse of the wolf for a split second before the wolf blows the candle out again. Instead of jumping up and screaming, Shang decides to be sneaky and tell the wolf about the Gingko nuts that are so good to eat and right outside their house. The children climb the tree and start to eat the nuts without the wolf, until Shang has an idea. Shang says that if the wolf gets in s basket and throws a robe to the children that she will pull the wolf up to the top of the tree to eat some of the delicious Gingko nuts. The wolf agrees because his stomach is so hungry. The children "accidentally"drop the wolf twice, but on the third time they pull the wolf up high, they let go of the rope and the wolf "breaks his heart."
This story shows courage and cunning on the part of the children in the story. I would suspect that most of my future students would have no idea what to do if wolf came into their homes pretending to be their grandma. I thought the story was well written and gave a good twist on the original story of Little Red Riding Hood. There was a lot of text on each page, but the story still leaves a lot up to the reader to infer. For instance, Shang sees the wolf, but she never has an "aHA! moment" where she lets her siblings know. Shang just goes to work with her plan, and we just have to assume that she has it all planned out and that the other kids will follow along. I loved the illustrations in this book. The pictures are all painted, probably water colored. Each page is divided into vertical pictures. There are very few harsh, clear lines in the art work. The majority, if not all of it has blurred edges. Some of the paintings even swing towards being interpretive. The pictures are not clear cut, so interpretation is left to the reader. This gives the chance for different readers to get different impressions of the sane picture. I really loved that this was the style of this book.