Red Rider's Hood

I heard her breathe out, and the smell of the spent match was replaced by a perfumy smoke, like burning spice. It was something I'd never smelled before, and I thought I had smelled just about every kind of cigarette.
"What are you smoking Grandma?"...
"Aconitus napellus," she said, flicking ash from the tip of the cigarette. "Of course it's known by a more common name."
"What?" I asked.
Although I couldn't see her smiling in the dark, somehow I knew she was. "Wolfsbane," she said.

Here we have Shusterman's spin on the Red Riding Hood fairy tale, modernized nicely for today's youth. His Granny isn't tender pickings for the wolf - she's a werewolf hunter and she makes her own silver bullets. While he's put in some nice homages to the show more original, he still weaves in timely subjects like peer pressure, the need to belong and the way love binds families together. It's classic Shusterman - not his absolute best - but still a quick, fun read. show less

I love these re-tellings. The first one was about Medusa and this one obviously is Little Red Riding Hood. Only Red is a boy. Loved the wolves and the vampires too. Great book

We only know the main character as Red Rider. He had a Radio Flier wagon as a kid and now has a blood red mustang that her fixed up for the past two years--he has just turned 16. As the story begins, Red's mother is sending him to his grandmother's to deliver some "bread"(i.e., money.) He should go straight there but does not. He is stopped at an inatersection by a guy cleaning his windshiled and looking in his car. It is Marvin Flowers--Marvelous Marvin past quarterback at Madison-Manfred High who has dropped out of college. Marvin sends Red to the Antique Shop to see his sister--Marissa. When he finally gets to his grandmothers things are weird--
Doesn't sound like Grandmother
What big hair you have grandmother
What ganrly teeth tyou show more have grandmother
What hairy knuckles you have grandmother
... and Cedric Soames (bad leader of a gang) springs from the bed to get the money. Throws Red Rider into the basement with Grandma. Cedric had his gang of Wolves with him.

Ganndma and Red decide to get the money back and they team up with Marissa to discover that the guys in the gang are werevolves. Marissa had Xavier Soames (Cederc's Great Grandfather's skull.) It could detect people who were werewolves (it turned into a beast for those who were not.)

Werewolves were in their town in the 1930 and were now back as were the hunters. Grandmother turned out to be a hunter on her motercycle. The Cryps were a female gang after the wolves. In the end they got the wolves in an old dance club. Grandma and Marissa rigged the disco ball to drop as a weapon--with silverware piercing the werewolves and making them die. Cerric escaped but Red Rider got him. A yuear later Ceric's skull appears in Red Rider's room and continues to return on full moons but does not come back to life. show less

Red is an urban teenager of mixed racial heritage. When members of a gang called the Wolves steal his Mustang, Red vows revenge. He joins the gang, determined to destroy it from within--only to discover that the Wolves are even more dangerous than he could ever have imagined. For three days each month, when the moon is at its fullest, they turn into werewolves. At the end of a brief probationary period, Red will be expected to accept full membership in the gang by becoming a werewolf himself. An interesting twist on Little Red Riding Hood by the Brothers Grimm. (Not yet rated because I'm still reading it.)