Little Roja Riding Hood

Little Roja Riding Hood

Author: Susan Middleton Elya

Illustrator: Susan Guevara

Genre: Fantasy and Science Fiction

Grade Level: Pre-K to 4^th grade

Abue. Bosque. Lobo. Sopa. Ropa. Nieta. Valiente and I could go on. These are some of the words featured in this wonderful book. This story is Little Red Riding Hood but with a twist. A Spanish twist in fact. A little girl (niña) named Roja likes to wear her red cape (capas). Her mother tells her to take a hot soup (muy caliente) to her grandma (abuela) who is suffering from a bad cough. So, the little girl goes to the wood where she sees a wolf (lobo) and distracts her to pick up the flowers while he runs off with her cape to see gran (abue). When the wolf enters the house, abue knows that he is not her grandchild. So, she acts naïve and plays along with wolf giving him compliments. At the very end when gran comments how big his teeth (dientes) is and the wolf replies “The better to eat you.” In comes Roja with her basket full of hot soup and swings at the wolf. The wolf gets burned by the hot soup and runs outside the house. From this day on, gran becomes extra diligent whenever someone knocks at the door. She installs a security system so she could check who is at the door.

The illustration on this book is great. The vibrant colors and the somewhat realistic art makes the story look more interesting. The perspective is from the readers' view where you get to see emotions of the characters. The book is filled with illustration with some pages dedicated to one whole big illustration. The text accompanies the illustration at the usually at the top of the page.

 Thoughts:

I loved this book because not only is it little red riding hood updated version but also, I get to learn Spanish. Yay! All the translation is at the front of the page after the title so I was flipping front and back as I was reading the book. This is a delightful book to have on the bilingual class as well as ESL class. Students who are bilingual can teach monolingual students all the words present on the book. I think it will b a good partnered book to read! I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. Muy bien!