Gr 1-3‘Lowell continues her line of traditional tales repositioned on a ranch and retold in cowboy lingo. In this one, Mother warns Little Red to watch out for snakes, but of course, it's a wolf that causes the trouble. Little Red knows better than to dillydally with wolves, but she decides to string him along until she can find out what he's done with Grandma. When Grandma pops through the door with her shotgun, just in the nick of time, the two lambaste that "low-life lobo" and he goes on the lam permanently. Red's lesson is "A girl's gotta stick up for herself"‘with help from Grandma. Cecil's colors reflect deep western sunset shades of red and orange. Flat cartoon figures have the look of plane geometry‘many of the curves are effected with short straight lines. Grandma alludes to the wolf as a "rancid son of a parallelogram," giving rise to possible math activities and art lessons. An amusing addition to the growing collection of fairy-tale spoofs.‘Ruth Semrau, formerly at Lovejoy School, Allen, TX (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

``Once upon a ranch'' is how Lowell begins her enjoyable twist on the story of Little Red Riding Hood, starring a brave heroine who needs no lesson in self-reliance. First seen aiming a slingshot at a deadly snake, Little Red is instructed to take food to her sick grandmother. In the desert, she encounters the wolf, who is wearing a cowboy hat ``three shades blacker than a locomotive,'' and asks too many oily questions: ``What's your name, honey?'' and ``Where are you going, sugar? . . . Why not take a little ride with me?'' Little Red gives him the slip, only to rediscover him masquerading as her grandmother in the old woman's own bed. The wolf snatches her, but Grandma appears brandishing first an ax and then a shotgun to chase the villain off, complaining indignantly all the while: ``Breaking into my house! . . . Getting fleas in my bed!'' These two no-nonsense characters, with stick legs and huge cowboy boots, happily recap the victory while sitting on a fence munching sandwiches. There is humor in the pictures, with snakes among the cacti. The desert colors--mostly yellow, orange, and green--are painted in flat blocks of color in effective compositions that are deceptively simple while enhancing each scene's mood, whether pastoral or fearsome. A merry success, this Wild West fairy tale makes other versions look limp by comparison. (Picture book. 5-8)

The lively retelling of the Grimms' classic tale 'Little Red Riding Hood' takes on a decidedly American Southwest flavor. The spunky protagonist with red hair, 'somewhere between firecrackers and new pennies,' sets off for Grandma's ranch armed with a loaf of bread and a jar of cactus jelly. Illustrated with warm earth tones, the comic pictures depict the dry, sun-bleached desert landscape. From HORN BOOK 1997, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

This Southwestern version of Little Red Riding Hood features a tomboyish main character, a wolf as sleazy as any streetcorner lothario and a distinct self-defense theme. Lowell's (The Three Little Javelinas) outwardly tough Little Red wears a sheriff's badge and shoots rattlesnakes with her slingshot. However, she's intimidated by her aggressor, who steps from behind a cactus and blocks her path ("She didn't want to talk to him, but she'd been raised to be polite"). Later, as Little Red flees the wolf in Grandma's house, Grandma bursts into the bedroom with an ax (she has been chopping wood). Together the two frontierswomen chase the wolf away, and the tale ends on an up-to-date empowerment note: " `Now, Red, have you learned your lesson?' asked Grandma. `Yep. A girl's gotta stick up for herself,' said Little Red." Cecil (Baby's Breakfast) contributes flat, angular gouache illustrations of desert scenes. He fills thin black outlines with coloring-book precision, in shades of sunset orange, oversaturated yellow and green. His light-gray wolf towers over the thin and frightened Little Red, playing up the tension Lowell builds into the text before she defuses it with Grandma's 10-gallon talk: "That yellow-bellied, snake-blooded, skunk-eyed, rancid son of a parallelogram!... This time he picked the wrong grandma." Ages 5-8. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Ages 5^-8. Little Red Riding Hood gets a Wild West twist in a funny version of the familiar tale. This sticks pretty close to the plot, but with a tall-tale twang to the telling and, naturally, a most favorable ending in which Grandma comes in and saves Little Red. Pure desert colors outlined in ink have a cartoon edge that is full of humor: Grandma, Little Red, and the cattle chasing the nightgown-bedecked wolf into the desert is particularly camp. The book's size and design make this a good choice for story hour; older kids will enjoy it, too. --Ilene Cooper