September 7, 2014

Super Red Riding Hood

As mother of a child who loves any hero in a cape (particularly if she is female, and sporting Wonder Woman-esque motifs), I knew that Claudia Dávila’s Super Red Riding Hood would be right up our street. Dávila is the former art director for Chirp and Chickadee magazines, a seasoned book designer and illustrator, plus author/illustrator of the The Future According to Luz graphic novels series, but Super Red Riding Hood is her first picture book. It’s about a little girl called Ruby who likes to fancy herself a defender of justice and imagine stories in which she gets to prove her super-hero mettle. While a trip through the woods to collect raspberries isn’t quite the mission she’s been fantasizing about, Ruby makes the most of it, rescuing small creatures and being brave in the face of weird woodland sounds. And so she’s totally ready when she stumbles into a situation requiring actual super-heroics, and has to stare down a ferocious wolf.

Turns out all that Super-Hero practice has paid off—Ruby stands up for herself, and learns that all her Wolf prejudices aren’t exactly accurate. And the wolf’s impressions of little girls are transformed by his encounter in the woods with Ruby—indeed, little girls can be Super Heroes after all. Which is a lesson that Harriet was already well aware of, but it was awfully nice to have it affirmed.

We turned up at Claudia Dávila’s launch yesterday at Little Island Comics, because the store is around the corner from our house, and we were fans of Super Red Riding Hood already. Harriet brought her own red cape, because we assured her that this was a cape-friendly event, though she was apprehensive about its lack of hood.Turned out this was not a problem, and she had fun posing in the big dark woods (with not a big bad wolf in sight, thank goodness).

Harriet and Iris enjoyed colouring Super Red Riding Hood, and Harriet made her own Big Bad Wolf puppet, while Iris was chased around the store in circles. Later, we all settled down to listen to Dávila read to us from her book, and she was wonderful, and Harriet had a good time reading along to the parts she knew off by heart already.

We have two birthday parties to attend this weekend, and both friends will be receiving their own copy of Super Red. Dávila’s fantastic illustrations are matched by a fun and inspiring story that never gets too scary, and reminds boys and girls of all ages that caped crusaders come in all kinds of excellent packages.