Little Red Riding Hood In A Forest

This page frames its subject close in, so the girl fills most of the paper rather than standing lost among the trees. Her hood is up, pulled forward around her face, and the cape fastens at her throat with a bow whose loops and trailing ends are drawn as separate shapes. Underneath she wears a simple dress with a band at the waist. Her hands rest on the handle of a woven basket at the lower right, and the weave of that basket is picked out in short overlapping strokes that give the eye something intricate to settle on after the broad flat areas above. Bare tree trunks rise on either side of her, drawn as tall vertical shapes with a few marks suggesting bark and nothing more. The forest stays deliberately plain, which keeps the sheet from tipping into clutter and leaves the cape as the obvious centerpiece. Most children reach for red here without being asked, and the story gives them permission. The basket and the trunks are a good place to introduce a second and third shade. There is enough open paper in the cape for a younger child to finish quickly and still feel the page is done.