The Complete Polly and the Wolf

Praise

“The stories…empower girls and underdogs, and extol brains over brawn.” —Martha V. Parravano

“I can’t think of much children’s literature that offers as much simultaneous pleasure to parent and child as the Polly and the wolf stories. Rereading them, I marveled, roared with laughter, was moved by the wolf’s eternal hopefulness. The stories are also exceptionally well-written. What’s more, they provide the comforting lesson that calm intelligence will triumph over silly rapaciousness every time. It’s no exaggeration to say that Storr’s wolf is one of my favorite characters in all of fiction.” —Elizabeth McCracken

“This agility in the storytelling keeps the book from being just frightening, just comic, or just a cautionary tale…60 years later it still reads like a feminist reworking of Little Red Riding Hood. The book even includes a story called ‘Little Polly Riding Hood,’ in which it turns out that the wolf has read the tale and mistaken it for a how-to guide for catching juicy little girls to eat. This story also has a character I particularly approve of: a grandmother, portrayed as quick-witted and able to see off danger. There are no weak little girls here, and no dotty old ladies either.” —Emma Healey, The Guardian

“It is an extremely good book, but one that was rather forgotten – in the last 10 or 15 years it had more or less disappeared from view. When we made it our book of the month and gave it a prominent place in all the shops, parents and grandparents remembered it and bought it.” —James Daunt, chief executive of Waterstones

“With its charming black and white illustrations of a little girl with pigtails and knee socks, it is a throwback to another age. Yet the story of a resourceful child who outwits a wolf has flown to the top of the children’s best-seller list at Waterstones [UK], out-selling popular adult titles including Paula Hawkins’ hit thriller The Girl On The Train.” —Anita Singh, The Telegraph (UK)