In Little Red, Gilbert tells a contemporary verse version of the tale of Little Red Riding Hood. Little Red Riding Hood is one of the original didactic stories about missing and murdered girls/women in a long history of this kind of violence against women-especially in earlier versions where """"Wolf leapt upon Little Red Riding Hood and gobbled her up."""" It's also a deeply entrenched lesson in gender roles. In Little Red, Gilbert tells a contemporary verse version of this tale with all of the angst/anxieties of a different time and the dangers that now surround our children. But, she also extends that and suggests some bigger questions: what happens to children when parents are absent? What happens to an aging Red, Grandmother, Woodcutter and Wolf? What happens when """"wolf decides to start a family/hopes his past will stay there/and that he can be a good father""""? Gilbert suggests: """"we have failed our sons/we have failed our daughters"""" and about wolf, that """"we've grown so, so tired of his story."""" | Little Red by Kerry Gilbert, Paperback | Indigo Chapters