Fractured Fairy Tales: Text Suggestions for Little Red Riding Hood

So one of my goals this summer is to finish all of the products that I started this year and only finished about 50-70% of the way through.  One of the units I really enjoyed this year was studying Fractured Fairy Tales.  Fractured Fairy Tales are such a fun way to challenge students to think creatively and practice all of their comprehension skills. There are so many ways you can use Fractured Fairy Tales to meet the CCSS. Here is a link to a post I did earlier in the year on Fractured Fairy Tales with a freebie story map for fractured fairy tales.

Today I have a couple text suggestions for you for doing Fractured Fairy Tales with Little Red Riding Hood.  Aaron Frisch has written a new book called The Girl in Red with illustrations by Roberto Innocenti. 

The Girl in Red is a new version of Little Red Riding Hood that takes place in modern day in a large urban city.  The illustrations are beautiful, but have a dark undertone.  I would use this picture book with either grades 4-5 or even Middle School.  I actually think this would make a fabulous mentor text to use with Middle School or even High School.  The way the illustrations are drawn it alsmost reminds of me of graphic novels. You could have your students make a graphic novel version of a fractured fairy tale.

If you haven't really explored the Common Core Exemplar Texts, there are some fabulous texts on there. You can click here to get a copy of the Appendix B from Common Core State Standards website.

One of the Common Core Exemplar Texts for Grades 4-5 is Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf by Roald Dahl. In this narrative poem version of Little Red Riding Hood the little girl shoots the wolf at the end.  This poem would also open the door to getting your students to explore the idea of writing a poetic version of a fairy tale. I read this poem with my students this year and they loved it.  I had wanted to use the poem again but never got around to it. The poem comes from Roald Dahl's book Revolting Rhymes, which are all somewhat naughty versions of fairy tales. 

After Revolting Rhymes was written, some short videos were made of the poems.  You can find them on Youtube.  Here is the video for "Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf."



Dahl also has another book called Vile Verses.

I would look through the books carefully before handing them out to your students.  Some of the fractured fairy tale poems in the books probably are not the most appropriate choices for lower grades, but there really are some great fractured fairy tales with a lot of humor. Both of these books would be great sources of text for Grades 5-8 for a unit on Fractured Fairy Tales.

Another great text source for a unit on fractured fairy tales is the book Newfangled Fairy Tales by Bruce Lansky.

Hope you have a great weekend!