The Little Red Wolf by Amélie Fléchais
My rating: 5/5 cats
an easy five stars cats that wins in both story and artwork categories.
i got this through netgalley, so my photos have gone on that rough journey from computer screen to tiny camera and back to computer screen. i can only assume the physical book will be even more stunning, and i will soon be proven right about that because i am going to buy this the very moment it is available because GAH:
i want this woman to come to my apartment and paint murals on my walls.
this is an inverted little red riding hood story, with another layer of oomph on top of it that explains the bad blood between wolves and man.
between this and Beautiful Darkness and Panther*, my people sure do write some messed-up picture books. this one isn’t nearly as horrifying as Beautiful Darkness, but there’s something so wrong-feeling about a little cartoon wolf traipsing through the forest with a dead bunny head sticking out of his bindle, no matter how adorable.
and then once the munchies hit, well – walt disney never prepared kids for how nature actually works.
there’s also a really nice punch to the story, centered in the idea of perspective and how history looks different depending on where you’re standing, which is a pretty sophisticated lesson for the picture-book set.
i wish there had been maybe a page or two more to it – it feels a bit abrupt the way it is now. not jarring, just unfinished-feeling.
still, it’s pretty much perfect, and i can’t say enough about the art, whether she’s in cute-mode
or more ominous-mode:
and i definitely want this to be part of my room mural. because that’s still happening, right?
a top-notch picture book i can’t wait to hold in my hands.
* okay, so the panther-guy is from belgium, not france, but since there’s a shared border, language, and fried-potato legacy, he can share in this dubious honor as well.
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this is incredible. real review to come, but this is DEFINITELY one i will be buying as soon as it is available.
