I AM NOT LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD

The title is the most intriguing part of this sweet, benign but insubstantial offering.

A small girl, doll-like, with bright cheeks, wide coat and striped stockings, tells her story: Though she wore a red scarf and took a basket into the woods, she is not Little Red Riding Hood. Instead of a wolf, she meets a white bear, to whom she explains that she is “…collecting snow, soft snow: whiter than milk, fluffier than the clouds, and fresher than vanilla ice cream.” The illustrations are soft, perhaps silk-screened or stamped, in washed hues of blue and gray accented with red. The bear offers to take her “where the moon hangs in the sky.” There, they dance in the falling snow. The bear eats snowflakes while the girl collects them in her basket before they return home at dawn. “When we arrived, I gave the bear my red scarf. ‘Where is your home?’ I asked him. The bear didn’t answer. He just plodded away.” A toy bear sits in the window of the girl’s house as the white bear flies overhead, red scarf around his neck. Though such an adventure in a fairy tale might hint of a more fundamental transaction, here it’s clearly just a dream.

Light as a snowflake and very quiet despite the swirling snow and the dancing.