Read the fairy tale Zummy loves
Little Red Riding Hood
A girl in a red hood, a basket for her grandmother, and a wolf waiting in the woods: one of the best-known cautionary tales in the world, in the form first written down in France.
In a village at the edge of a great forest, there lived a little girl so loved by her grandmother that the old woman had sewn her a hood and cloak of red velvet. The girl wore it everywhere, until the whole village simply called her Little Red Riding Hood.
One morning, her mother packed a basket with a fresh loaf of bread and a small pot of butter. “Your grandmother is unwell,” she said. “Take this to her, and go straight there, without wandering off the path.”
A stranger in the woods
The forest path was long, and Little Red Riding Hood was not afraid of it, for she knew it well. Partway through the trees, she met a wolf, though she did not know to be frightened of him, having never met one before. He asked, in the friendliest voice he could manage, where she was going with such a full basket.
“To my grandmother’s house,” she answered, “just past the mill, at the first cottage in the clearing.” The wolf, thinking quickly, suggested she pick some flowers for her grandmother along the way, and while she wandered off the path gathering them, he ran ahead by the shorter route.
At grandmother’s house
The wolf reached the cottage first, and finding the door only latched, let himself in. When Little Red Riding Hood arrived some time later, flowers in hand, she found the curtains drawn and her grandmother, it seemed, already in bed.
“Come closer, my dear,” said a voice from beneath the blankets, and something about it made her pause at the doorway. “Grandmother,” she said slowly, “what big ears you have.” “The better to hear you with.” “What big eyes you have.” “The better to see you with.” “What big teeth you have.” And at that, the wolf sprang from the bed, but Little Red Riding Hood had already backed toward the open door, and she ran.
The woodcutters
Her cries carried across the clearing to a group of woodcutters working nearby, who came running with their axes raised. The wolf, cornered and outnumbered, fled back into the forest and was never seen in that village again. The woodcutters found the grandmother safe in the garden shed, where the wolf had locked her away rather than harm her, and the whole family sat down together that evening, badly shaken but whole.
From that day on, Little Red Riding Hood never left the path again, no matter how pretty the flowers looked beyond it, and she never forgot that a friendly voice, however kind it sounds, is not always to be trusted.
▶ Watch on our YouTube channel
Normandy Lullaby
Play this softly while you read Little Red Riding Hood aloud: a traditional handplayed lullaby from Normandy, in the north of France.
More stories, more lullabies
This is one tale in a growing collection of traditional stories from around the world, each one paired, where we can, with a real lullaby from the same culture.