Once upon a time, there was a kind and sweet little girl. Everyone loved her, but her mother and grandmother loved her the most. Her grandmother knitted her a red bonnet—a Little Red Riding Hood—and because of that bonnet, they called her Little Red Riding Hood. Her grandmother lived all by herself in a little cottage beyond the forest. She didn’t want to move to the village; she had grown accustomed to her cottage beyond the forest—and what would the hares, deer, and birds have done without her in the winter! She always had something tasty for them to nibble on or peck at. One summer, her mother baked some cakes, poured some raspberry juice into a bottle, and said to Little Red Riding Hood, “Grandma hasn’t been to see us in a month. Take this to her and tell her to come visit us soon!”
Little Red Riding Hood took the basket with the cakes and the raspberry juice and set off. Her mother called after her, “Little Red Riding Hood, don’t chase butterflies along the way, and don’t dip your feet in the stream! Go straight ahead so you don’t get lost!” Little Red Riding Hood nodded her head to show she was listening, her pigtails bouncing on her back. She made it past the village, crossed one field boundary, crossed another, and there before her stood a tall forest. Little Red Riding Hood walked and walked, through the grass and over the moss, and the people in the fields and the larks above the fields were now just a distant sound.