In Don't Eat Granny, Red Hoodie is trying to write a story about herself, her granny and a wolf along the lines of the well-known story of 'Little Red Riding Hood'. Red Hoodie's story is written in her own handwriting but there are punctuation mistakes and suddenly her sentences take on a different meaning. Here's one that comes at the start of the book:
'Red Hoodie is going to visit Granny in her bag.
Red Hoodie has a cake, cookies and candy.'
Red Hoodie has put the full stop in the wrong place and there's an illustration showing poor Granny's head poking out of her black handbag.
'I can't see how to put it right. Please someone help me!' Red Hoodie calls out, and four little punctuation characters arrive on the page only to become caught up in the action.
In this a story within a story we see the page turns in the illustrations, with Red Hoodie peeping over the page to see what is going to happen next. Gillian McClure wrote Don't Eat Granny for six-year-old Magnus and Bjorn when they were learning the first four punctuation marks at school. They loved spotting punctuation jokes, so she created a story full of them!
