Lon Po Po, A Red Riding Hood Story From China (A picture book that retells a folk tale)

Title: Lon Po Po, A Red Riding Hood Story From China
ISBN:0-399-21619-7
Translated and Illustrated: Ed Young
Date of publication:1989
Award won: The Caldecott Medal
Age recommendation: 4 to 8
Group represented: Chinese



This book was about three children, Shang, Tao, and Paotze. They lived in the country with their mother in China. On their grandmother's (Po Po) birthday their mother sets out to go and visit the grandmother and leaves the children at home. She tells her three children to be good while she is away. She will not return until the next day so the children should close and lock the door tight at night. A wolf that lives near by discovers that the children's mother has gone away for the night and decides to pay the children a visit. The wolf dresses up like an old woman and pretends to be the children's grandmother. The wolf knocks on the door and the children are surprised to hear that their grandmother is at the door because their mother has just gone to visit her. The children are fooled and let the wolf into their home where he immediately blows out the candles that light their home so the children can not see him. After getting into bed for the night the eldest child realizes that their "grandmother" is in fact a wolf. She convinces the wolf that he needs to eat some Ginko nuts from the tree outside their home. All three children climb to the top of the tree because the wolf tells them that he is now too old to climb. When up in the tree the eldest child tells the others that their grandmother is really the wolf disguised as an old woman. The children devise a plan and tell the wolf to go inside and get a basket so they can pull the wolf up into the tree so he too can enjoy some Ginko nuts. After trying to pull him to the top three times and dropping him three times, on purpose, the children manage to kill the wolf. After they make sure he is dead, and that they are safe, the children climb down, go into the house, and lock the door behind them. The next day their mother returned and they told her all about the wolf that came to visit them.





This book could be read in classrooms to illustrate the importance of not answering your door to strangers and to always make sure you know who you are letting into your house. It could also be read after reading Little Red Riding Hood to illustrate how stories are told in other cultures. The book could be the first in a series of books read in the classroom to talk about story telling in other parts of the world. The class could talk about how stories are developed and how folk tales are past down from generation to generation. The children could pick one of the classic folk tales and make their own version of it like Lon Po Po did with Little Red Riding Hood.