Little Red Riding Hood

Little Red Riding Hood in "Musical Fairy Tales".

Ernie as Little Red Riding Hood.

Little Red Riding Hood is the central figure in the classic fairy tale of the same name. In the most common version of the story, she goes into the woods to take food to her grandmother's house. Along the way she meets The Big Bad Wolf who convinces her to stop and pick some flowers. The Big Bad Wolf then runs ahead, eats her grandmother, and disguises himself as her grandmother. When she finally arrives at her grandmother's house she in turn is eaten by the wolf. A friendly woodsmen rescues them, and helps them kill the wolf.

On Sesame Street she attends Storybook Community School. She has a sister named Little Green Riding Hood. In her appearances on Sesame Street, she often mistakes everyone she meets for her grandmother and continuously calls them that.

Screen appearances

• She has appeared in two Sesame Street News Flash installments. In one skit, she was performed by Richard Hunt, and in the other by Fran Brill.
• In a third "Sesame Street News Flash", Cookie Monster dressed up as Little Red Riding Hood, posing as Cookie Red Riding Hood. The Big Bad Wolf also appears in this sketch, but he appears as a doctor taking care of Granny, who is sick.
• Cookie Monster assumes the role again in a Monsterpiece Theater segment, "Little Red Riding Cookie."
• In a 2001 episode, she appears in "Musical Fairy Tales", again played by Fran Brill.
• Elmo and Abby Cadabby attended Little Red Riding Hood's birthday party in the direct-to-video release Elmo and Abby's Birthday Fun! with Jack and Hansel and Gretel. Brill again played the part.
• She appeared in Episode 4318, performed by Stephanie D'Abruzzo.

Print appearances

• Little Red appeared in a maze in "The Sesame Street Treasury Volume 1", and she was the featured character for July in "The Sesame Street 1977 Calendar".

• Little Red appears in Grover's Little Red Riding Hood based on the Sesame Street News Flash sketch.

• Little Red appeared at the Easter picnic in Rosita's Easter on Sesame Street, with her Storybook Community friends Baby Bear, Abby Cadabby and Little Bo Peep.

• She also appears in Elmo Visits the Dentist, where she's startled to see the Big Bad Wolf in the dentist's waiting room. While she's waiting, Little Red leafs through an issue of Goodies magazine.

• Little Red can be spotted shopping for plates at Hooper's Store in the 2002 book Look and Find Elmo.

• Bert, Ernie, Betty Lou and Roosevelt Franklin dress up as characters from "Little Red Riding Hood" in the 1976 paper doll book Paper Doll Players.

• Little Red and the Wolf dressed as her Grandmother appear in Elmo's Lift-and-Peek Around the Corner Book.

• Little Red feeds birds with Bert, while the Big Bad Wolf lies in wait with a snowball, in the book Friendly, Frosty Monsters.

• Little Red and the Wolf appear on a parade float in the book Big Bird's Red Book.

Parodies and Mentions

• Dinosaurs: Classic Tales featured a parody of the story, "Little Red Riding Horn", featuring Charlene Sinclair in the title role, Ethyl Phillips as her grandmother, and B.P. Richfield as the "Wolfedon".
• In the version of "The People in Your Neighborhood" that was heard in The Sesame Street Book & Record, when Bob asks one Anything Muppet who he would be if he wore a firemans hat, the Muppet guesses that he would be Little Red Riding Hood.
• In The Muppets on Puppets, Rowlf the Dog starts out telling the story of Cinderella, which quickly turns out to have the plot of Little Red Riding Hood.
• On The Hoobs, Iver, Groove, Tula, and Roma set up a play based on the story called "Little Pink Riding Hoob."
• Zoe plays both Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother in the 2004 Sesame Street coloring book, Big Bird's Favorite Fairy Tales. Cookie Monster takes the role of the Wolf. At the end of the story, the Wolf convinces Red and Granny that they should all have a picnic, and share the basket together.
• Zoe also appears as Little Red Riding Hood in the 2008 book Storybook ABCs. Elmo appears as the Big Bad Wolf's replacement.
• In an Ernie and Bert sketch, Ernie shows Bert his collection of Rs. One R he claims to have gotten from Little Red Riding Hood.
• In a 2010 storybook, Big Bird plays the part of Big Red Riding Hood.
• The story was referenced twice in season 11 of Plaza Sésamo: In episode 945, Pancho and a Multimonstruo audition for the part of the Big Bad Wolf in Federico Pelini's film adaptation and in another episode where they make up their own version.
• Mrs. Libby tells the story of Little Red Riding Hood with the aide of a puppet in the book A Visit to the Sesame Street Library.
• In the Sesamstrasse episode 2321, Wolle imagine what it would be like to be Little Red Riding Hood, with Nils as the hunter, Pferd as the stand-in for the Big Bad Wolf who was on vacation on The Bahamas and Rumpel as the grandmother.