Into the forest
Summary:
A boy hears a strange sound in the night and wakes up to find his father has gone. He misses his father terribly but his mother sends him on an errand to visit his grandmother, and tells him not to go through the forest. The boy decides to go through the woods and meets different people along the way.
Edited by: Dublin City University
Comment:
In another reinvention of the little Red Riding Hood story, Browne’s main protagonist is a boy with anxieties grounded in the real world. The narrative explores the boy’s anxieties through his walk through the forest where he encounters lost or abandoned children, represented as threatening. When he finds a red coat and puts it on, the boy’s and the reader’s expectation of what awaits him in his grandmother’s house intensifies. However, his fears are finally confounded as he is reunited with his family.