Big Bad Wolf facts for kids
The Big Bad Wolf is a wolf and a fictional villain in many fairy tales, such as The Boy Who Cried Wolf, Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs.
Contents
Symbols
Medieval people did not like wolves because wolves would eat their sheep and other animals, so sometimes the big bad wolf in the story is supposed to be a wolf and does not represent anything else. But other times the wolf is symbol for something else. There are two main ways to look at symbols in Little Red Riding Hood: In one, the girl Riding Hood is a symbol for the sun. She is eaten by the wolf, who is a symbol for winter or night. Little Red Riding Hood escaping from the wolf's belly is like the sun rising again the next day or spring coming again the next year.
In folklore
Aesop's Fables
- "The Boy Who Cried Wolf"
- "The Dog and the Wolf"
- "The Priest and the Wolf"
- "The Wolf and the Crane"
- "The Wolf and the Lamb"
- "The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing"
Grimm's Fairy Tales
English Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs
Musical works by Sergei Prokofiev
In other things
There are also modern versions of the Big Bad Wolf. For example, in the graphic novel series Fables, Bigby Wolf lives with other fairy tale characters who have run away to the real world and works as a detective.
Images for kids
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A depiction of the Big Bad Wolf with Little Red Riding Hood by Jessie Willcox Smith
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Illustration by L. Leslie Brooke, from The Golden Goose Book, Frederick Warne & Co., Ltd. 1905
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Illustration for Charles Perrault's Le Petit Chaperon Rouge from Histoires ou Contes du Temps passé: Les Contes de ma Mère l'Oye (1697). Gustave Doré's illustrations appear in an 1867 edition entitled Les Contes de Perrault. Second of three engravings
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Little Red Riding Hood, 19th-century painting by Fleury-François Richard
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"The better to see you with": woodcut by Walter Crane
See also
In Spanish: Lobo feroz para niños
