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!

Fractured Fairy Tales - Freebie Story Map

Our 4th Grade ELA curriculum references a lot of fairy tales, so I decided to pull in some fractured fairy tales.  If you have never taught Fractured Fairy Tales, it is a fabulous way to cover almost all of the Common Core Reading Literature Standards.  You can easily explore setting, characters, theme, imagery, point-of-view, visual elements, and even different text structures if you look at movie versions, poetry versions, and/or dramatic versions of fairy tales.

Here are three examples of some cute Fractured Fairy Tales from different points of view:

Source: parenting.com via April on Pinterest

Source: barnesandnoble.com via April on Pinterest

Source: astore.amazon.com via April on Pinterest

I am currently in the middle of making a Fractured Fairy Tale unit, but I thought I would share some web resources with you. Read Write Think has an interactive tool for students to plan and write their own Fractured Fairy Tale.  They also have lots of lesson ideas for Fractured Fairy Tales.  Here is a book list they have created with text suggestions. Scholastic has a tool where students can publish their Fractured Fairy Tales after they have written them, and students can find out info about John Scieszka (author of The True Story of the Three Little Pigs.)

Here is a website where you can get text suggestions of Fractured Fairy Tales.  Here is a website where you can original versions of fairy tales.

Last but not least is a quick freebie from my unit I am making.  It is a Fairy Tale Story Map.  I am going to have my students read an original version of a fairy tale, a fractured version with a different setting, and then a fractured version from a different point of view.  They will fill out this story map for all three versions. 

Then, we will compare and contrast the three versions.