Book review: The Little Red Wolf

The Little Red Wolf, by Amélie Fléchais (translated by Jeremy Melloul)

Description: (from goodreads)

Lose yourself in in the dark forests of Amelie Flechais’ spectacular artwork. A young wolf, on a journey to bring his grandmother a rabbit, is charmed by the nice little girl who offers to help him… but nice is not the same as good. A haunting fairy tale for children and adults alike.

Publication date: October 3th 2017.
A review copy (eARC) of this book was provided by the publisher through Netgalley. Some things might change in the final copy.

I’d heard of Amélie Fléchais before, since she is a French artist and I had already seen her books in bookshopes but I had never read anything from her yet. Don’t ask me why, because they really all look very good! When I saw on netgalley that this one was available to read I gladly jumped on the occasion.

And wow, this children’s picture book was so so so beautiful! From the cover I knew I would love the art, and I wasn’t wrong. There are a lot of details that catches the eye, the colour are vibrant, soft… I’ll go to the extent to say that even without any text this would have been wonderful!

The story follows a little wolf who has to go through the forest to bring a meal to his grandmother. Of course this is a retelling of the Little Red Riding Hood with the roles reversed. Here, the wolf is the innocent main character, and humans are the monster in the forest. The story quickly takes a dark turn, reflected in the dark tones of the artworks. Like most tales aimed at children, this is slightly scary in a stunning way, but works really well at teaching a lesson.

My only problem is that the ending was a bit abrupt. I felt like there should have been a bit more, I was expecting to follow this cute wolf just a little while longer. Still, it was a nice ending nonetheless, showing that there are always two sides to a story with a great twist.

This is a short and beautiful book, that I would recommend. This is one of those where you wish you could sent a copy to your younger self, so I would definitely buy it for me or for a child. I even went to the library to read it again in French, and be able to look even more at the beautiful artworks. Pictures below! (Disclaimer: might be different in some minor ways to the english edition.)