RED RIDING HOOD

In his first book, an English artist stays close to Perrault in a spare, graceful retelling with full-bleed double-spread paintings that--like Montresor's art (1991)--emphasize the story's link to the world of dream. Coady's hazy, unfocused figures appear in the background of his roughly textured art, or as shadows or close-ups centered on such telling details as eyes. The superimposed text is not always easy to read on the dark ground, and the phrasing of the concluding moral is pedestrian; still, a dramatic setting that powerfully evokes the tale's inherent nightmare quality with its deep, luminous colors and suggestive shadows, leaving specifics to the imagination.