Chaperon

Chaperon by SJ Maas 

The forest always smells of the battle between life and death. The rage on both sides is unconquerable. It can be felt always. Always. A short story that retells and reexamines Little Red Riding Hood.
Banner Credit: Melissa

Ali Thinks: We've all heard the tale of Little Red Riding Hood— well, one version of it, anyway. I've heard all my life that there is always more than one side to any story, and in S.J.Maas' Chaperon, a different, darker side is shown on the story that we all thought we knew. While this was an innovative take on Little Red Riding Hood's story, there are still elements in it that make it recognizable to the original account, which makes it seem all the more real.

Chaperon is an eleven year old girl, still innocent in the matters of events that go on around her, such as the ongoing war and hatred between Man and Wolf. Despite the fact that she is this innocent little girl just walking through the forest to give her grandmother some bread, Fenris, the Wolf prince she meets, isn't ignorant to the happenings around him at all, and the juxtaposition between them made for a great dynamic, especially since Chaperon didn't know of the role she was playing at the particular moment.

What I love the most about this story is not the interaction between Chaperon and Fenris, the affect he had on her, or even the references to other fairytales, as great as all of those elements were. To me, the greatest part was just how mush like a folk tale the narrative sounds. The whole time reading it through, it felt like I was reading an actual old fairytale written centuries and centuries ago, and the element of timelessness that is produced by that is, in essence, simply magnificent.