10 Little Red Riding Hood Retellings For All Ages

Instead of the woods, Violet and her little brother must traverse the long halls of their apartment building in order to bring soup to a sick neighbor. Their real and imagined adventures along the way make for a charming ride — especially when their sick neighbor turns out to look very much like a wolf.

In this Chinese fairy tale that draws comparisons to Little Red Riding Hood, a mother of three daughters must leave her children alone while going to visit their granny. She warns them to keep the door locked tight, but when a voice claiming to be their Po Po, their grandmother, comes knocking on the door, they have no choice but to let her in. Except her voice is awfully low and her face is awfully hairy. And that’s because it’s not their grandmother…it’s Granny Wolf.

Red isn’t afraid of anything — except magic. But when her granny grows sick, it seems that magic might be the only thing that can save her. Along with a porridge-obsessed girl named Goldie, Red sets out on a journey that will take her through dwarven caverns and beast’s castles in order to find a cure for her grandmother. But it’s the wolf and the woodsman following the girls and seeking their help to defeat one and other that might possess the very magical solution Red is looking for.

This dark retelling flips the script by casting a young wolf as Little Red. The Little Red Wolf is on a journey to bring his grandmother a rabbit, but when he crosses path’s with a young human girl who offers to help, it seems like a harmless situation. But the little wolf has been warned about humans. And though the girl seems nice, nice is not the same as good.

The ending is quite dark, so make sure this one is going to be appropriate for the young readers in your life before recommending it.

Like everyone raised in Oakvale, Adele has been taught to avoid the dark woods that surround the village. Lightless and full of monsters, no one ventures into the woods unless absolutely necessary. But unlike others, Adele has good reason to venture into the woods. She is a guardian. She comes from a long line of women who are able to shift into wolves to protect the people of their village. But following her calling means abandoning the one she loves and living a life of secrecy. Faced with a future very different from the one she imagined for herself, Adele will have to decide just how far she’s willing to go to protect the people of Oakvale.

What if it was Red Riding Hood who hunted the wolf? Many years ago, Rosa made bad choices. And now she’s paying for them. Alongside Hou Yi the Archer, Rosa attempts to make up for the sins of her past by stopping the deadly sunbirds from razing the countryside. But both are haunted by hindsight and the consequences of the choices they’ve made are still catching up with them, even today. And when Hou Yi’s past comes calling, Rosa will have to reckon with the reasons she left her own homeland so many years ago — and why she can never go back.