Straying from the Path: New Tales of Little Red

by AJ Odasso, Imogen Howson, JoSelle Vanderhooft

Authors AJ Odasso, Jennifer Moore, Batya Deene, Fraser Sherman, Angela Rega, Imogen Howson, Jo Thomas, Joselle Vanderhooft, Jessica Corra, Greg O. Weatherford, Hilary J. Nowack, Genevieve Valentine, Skadi meic Beorh, H. Anne Stoj, David Sklar, Lee Pletzers, and Teresa Wymore re-tell the story of Little Red Riding Hood in poetry and prose. In these stories, Red is sometimes innocent, sometimes less so; and the wolf is sometimes a monster, and most often human.

ebook

First published November 15, 2009

About the author

AJ Odasso’s poetry, essays, and short stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies since 2005. Their first full poetry collection, Things Being What They Are, an earlier version of The Sting of It, was shortlisted for the 2017 Sexton Prize. The Sting of It was published by Tolsun Books and won Best LGBT in the 2019 New Mexico/Arizona Book Awards. Their first novel, The Pursued and the Pursuing, will be published in September 2021 by DartFrog Blue, the traditional publishing imprint of DartFrog Books. AJ holds an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Boston University. They teach at University of New Mexico and Central New Mexico Community College, and they have enjoyed participating in ABQ-local literary events at their synagogue and beyond. They have served as Senior Poetry Editor at Strange Horizons magazine since 2012.

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have to say, this anthology of Little Red riding hood re-tellings was just OK. The individual stories merged together so much, that few stood out to me as memorable. One story that did stand out and that I particularly enjoyed was Imogen Howson's "Scented Danger." It's a re-telling of Little Red Riding Hood with a sci-fi/futuristic feel, much like Howson's Rapunzel re-telling, "Falling," that I enjoyed from Drollerie Press's SteroOpticon. I'm not sure if both stories take place in the same world, but both were stand outs in their respective collections, and I'd love to see Howson would come up with in an entire fairy tale collection all on her own.



Technical Notes: As with the other Drollerie Press book I've read, this was *mostly* well-formatted, it had nice little pictures between stories, and the problem I had with the last book (really, really long page turns between short stories), is non-existent with this one. There are a couple of formatting issues, but far less than a lot of e-books I read these days.