Little Red Rewrite
I have an assignment I love to teach whenever I get the chance: We read the Grimm version of Little Red Riding Hood out loud, (called ‘Little Red Cap”) catching details we might not have otherwise, and then rewrite the tale from another character’s point of view. This could be the Wolf, the Mother, the Hunter, even the picnic basket, the woods themselves.
Last week, while the students were scribbling away, I grabbed a pen and some scrap paper and wrote from the flowers’ POV, the ones the wolf insisted Little Red sniff so he had time to race to the cabin. We had 15 minutes to create, and here is what I came up with:
Nosegays, that’s what we’re called when we’re together. We live in this forest and spring from the earth when the season is right. Bees nestle in our centers, gathering nectar. Birds wing around us while building their nests. We add color to our dark environment, sunshine yellow, powder blue, deep purple. We exist to exist, until… THAT GIRL - her red cap such a clash to our subtler hues. Her strident gait and grabby hands - they’re coming for us. She rips our stems out of the earth. We crackle in dismay, bending immediately due to lack of nutrition. She says something about a gift for her grandma, but her gift is our death, torn from the ground in one violent swoop. We are held captive in her fists as she swings us back and forth, skipping along the path. And when she pounds on the door, our petals fall, and when the wolf gobbles her down we scatter to the ground like falling confetti. For a moment we’re all dead - Grandma, Little Red and us, and only the wolf remains - smug after consuming two beings. But suddenly, the man with the scissors is stepping all over us - innocent victims in this crime scene, tearing our petals apart, breaking our stems with his boots. And eventually they are saved, the little girl and her old grandmother, reunited, amazed to be alive. But we are ground to a pulp, dirt on the floor, ready to be swept into the bin and taken out with tomorrow’s trash. We lived, we bloomed, we died… all for a gift that was never given.
It’s a fun writing exercise, taking an existing story and writing it through another’s POV. The students always have fun with it, clamoring to read out loud when they are done.
What fairytale will you rewrite? Perhaps Doc will tell the Snow White story from his perspective, or one of the newborn twins will tell Rapunzel’s. Maybe the glass slipper has a story to tell. Why don’t you give it a try? I’d love to see your stories if you want to send them my way.
Don’t forget, another Creativity Check-In happens at the end of the month, on Sunday, September 28th, at 6pm pst. Feel free to share with a friend. We’ll talk about false starts in this one.
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