Petite Rouge

Title: Petite Rouge (Picture Puffins) : A Cajun Red Riding Hood
Author: Mike Artell  
Illustrator: Jim Harris 
Publication Date: 2001  
Genre/Format: Folk Literature - Fairy Tale/Picture Book
Summary: This is the classic Red Riding Hood tale with animal characters set in Louisiana, complete with Cajun culture throughout! 
What I Think: I had a blast reading this book to Peanut last night!  I easily fell into the Cajun dialect and loved the rhythmic reading that the text inspired.  It took Peanut a second to realize the language was different and I stopped a few times to explain that the words were different and that some words sounded different but we used the pictures to understand what was going on.  I loved it, Peanut is three so I can see how it was a little confusing for him...and I'm not sure he really, truly knows the regular version of Red Riding Hood (I better get on that, huh?).
Read Together: K - 8
Read Alone: 3 - 8
Read With: This could be part of a folk literature unit - read with other versions of Little Red Riding Hood to compare and contrast the different versions. 
Snatch of Text: "It was Claude, dat ol' gator.
Petite Rouge gotta honch
dat ol' Claude t'inkin' he'd
like to have her fo' lunch.
'We takin' dis food to mah 
grand-mere's,' she say.
'An' I got me dis pole, 
so you git out de way!'"
Reading Strategies to Practice: Making Connections, Predicting, Making Inferences
Writing Strategies to Practice: Slang, Rhyme, Rewriting
Writing Prompts: Choose your favorite fairy tale and rewrite it in a different setting or with different characters.  Write a page of dialogue including slang your characters would use so a reader could tell you about the characters only from their dialogue.
Topics Covered: Fairy Tales, Strangers
Translated to Spanish: No