Little Red Toboggan--Part 1

I thought I'd share a story I "re-wrote" for my niece as a Christmas present. Although Laura's only one year old, I'm hoping to have many years of reading the story to her each Christmas. I put it together in a scrapbook with pictures, so you're not getting the full effect, I'm afraid, but I hope you'll enjoy this brief serial retelling of Little Red Riding Hood with a Christmas setting!

Once upon a time very near the North Pole, there lived a little girl who always wore a bright red toboggan. She lived in the snowy woods with her family, and her grandmother lived not too far away in an igloo on the other side of the woods. In the whiteness of the snowy landscape, the little girl's red toboggan became a welcome sight to all those in the land, because she never failed to share a smile with friends or strangers. Because of her welcoming, friendly nature, people from all around knew to look for Laura, or Little Red, as they called her sometimes.

It had been about a month since Little Red had seen her grandmother, so one day she asked her mother's permission to go visit. Together, they packed into a basket a wonderful snack of sugar cookies, candy canes and hot chocolate (with marshmallows, of course) for Little Red to take with her.

When the basket was ready and Laura had put on her red toboggan, she kissed her mother goodbye and began the walk toward her grandmother's home.

"Remember to go straight to Grandma's house," her mother called out as she left. "Don't dawdle along the way and be careful. The woods can be very dangerous."

"Don't worry, Mom," Little Red replied. "I'll be careful."

But when Little Red noticed some lovely icicles hanging from the low tree limbs in the woods, she forgot her promise to her mother. She broke off a few to suck on and shook some others to watch the snow fall off the limbs to the ground all around her. She made snowballs and tossed them at knotholes in the trees, chased reindeer, made snow angels in the ground, and slid across a frozen stream. She was enjoying her fun so much that she didn't notice a dark shadow approaching out of the forest behind her.

It was a polar bear.