A three-hundred-year-old warning, given a better ending.

The narrow claim we do make

Charles Perrault’s 1697 printed version of Le Petit Chaperon Rouge closes with a moral that uses the wolf explicitly as a figure for charming, socially deceptive predators — the ones, he writes, who are gentle in company and follow young girls into their homes.

That is the whole of our historical claim, and it is well documented in the primary text.

The claims we do not make

• We do not claim the older oral folktale was invented as a child-protection lesson. It was not, and the record does not support it.
• We do not claim any continuous tradition connecting the tale to modern prevention practice.
• We do not claim this book prevents abuse, reduces victimisation, or has been shown to be effective. No study has been done.
• We do not describe ourselves as evidence-based. The honest description is that the design draws on published prevention principles and has not yet been evaluated.

What we changed, and why

Behaviour, not appearance

Modern prevention guidance for young children consistently teaches children to notice what a person does, rather than to identify dangerous people by how they look. Stranger-danger framing is both frightening and misdirected.

Somebody known, and liked

In Canada, in the large majority of cases the person who sexually harms a child before the age of fifteen is somebody the child knows. Strangers are a small minority. A story that concentrates a child’s vigilance on the unfamiliar therefore trains it in the wrong direction — which is why the Wolf in this book lives in the village.

Telling, and telling again

The great majority of children who are physically or sexually abused do not report it to police or child protection before they turn fifteen, and most tell nobody at all. That single fact is why the emotional climax of this book is not an escape. It is a grandmother saying I believe you.

Correct words, ordinary voice

Prevention guidance for this age band consistently includes proper names for body parts, privacy explained without shame, more than one safe adult, the difference between keeping and speaking a secret, and permission to tell about touching or picture-taking.

Where this sits alongside existing programmes

Established, evaluated CSA-prevention programmes exist in Canada and elsewhere and are delivered by organisations with decades of subject expertise. This book is not a replacement for any of them, and it should not be adopted as one.

It is designed as a story-led reinforcement layer — the thing a child asks for again at bedtime, carrying the same vocabulary the programme already taught them.

Sources

A dated source ledger is maintained alongside the manuscript and is available on request. Legal and reporting information is re-checked quarterly. If you find something on this site that is out of date or wrong, please tell us — that is a correction we will make quickly and note publicly.