Little Red Mystery Solved MOTAL:Storybook Dolls Artifact - Article 2

Last week, in Part 1, MOTAL intern Katie Rutz-Robbins introduced the museum’s storybook character dolls and put out a call for someone who might tell the identity of the mystery donor. A search of the museum’s official artifact accession records and donor permission sheets did not include the doll collection. Well, the mystery has been solved, and the identity of the donor will be revealed, but first please enjoy reading about Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf.


Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf
Author: Katie Rutz-Robbins


These storybook dolls are made of fabric and represent beloved characters in nursery rhymes and fairy tales. The dolls are between four and five inches tall and from two to four inches wide, depending upon their costumes. They are used as tools to accompany and enhance the stories read to children and stimulate children’s imagination and communication through play.


The storybook dolls pictured here represent Little Red Riding Hood in her red cloak with a basket full of treats and the Big Bad Wolf, dressed as Little Red’s grandmother. As the story goes— in the most commonly told version we hear in the US today— Little Red is tasked with visiting her grandmother and bringing her a basket of food. She is spotted by the Wolf, who overhears her tell the Huntsman that she is on her way to her grandmother's house. The Wolf then sneaks into the grandmother’s house, eats her whole, and impersonates her— as pictured by the storybook doll. When Little Red arrives, she is greeted by the Wolf and inquires about the size of the disguised Wolf’s ears and hands and eventually, “what big teeth you have!” to which the Wolf responds “all the better to eat you with!” and devours Little Red whole. The Huntsman hears the struggle and runs to the rescue, killing the Wolf and freeing Little Red and her grandmother. 


The version of the story that is told today is most similar to Perrault’s seventeenth century version, where he attached the lesson warning young women to look out for predatory men and that people are not always who they appear to be. Anthropologist Jamie Tehrani reminds us that the story was actually told centuries before. It was merely recorded and altered by Perrault and then rewritten again by the Grimm Brothers in the nineteenth century. Tehrani notes an eleventh century poem written down by a priest “about a girl wearing a red baptism tunic who wanders off and encounters this wolf” (National Geographic). Tehrani concludes that the priest’s record is the oldest known version of Little Red Riding Hood, but that the language used in the story as we know it— “what big teeth you have!” and “all the better to eat you with!”— is a more recent addition.


Funding for this article has been provided, in part, by California Humanities and the State of California through the California State Library (Grant Number CC20-3010).


Sources:
https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/fantasy-and-fairytale-in-childrens-literature#


https://www.pookpress.co.uk/project/brothers-grimm-biography/


https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/playing_with_a_variety_of_toys_leads_to_appropriate_growth#:~:text=Playing%20with%20toys%20such%20as,social%2C%20emotional%20and%20language%20skills.&text=Playing%20with%20a%20doll%20leads,without%20being%20frightened%20of%20them.


https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/11/131129-little-red-riding-hood-folktale-tehrani-anthropology-science/


You can read more about MOTAL intern Katie by clicking this link:
Behind the Scenes 7
Mystery Solved!
Not long after the article about Mother Goose and Little Miss Muffet went out as an email blast, a reader and MOTAL supporter responded to the request for information about the donor. She identified the delightful dolls easily, for fifteen years earlier she had given them as a holiday present to her mom. Norma Ames received the email and contacted the mother (a regular MOTAL volunteer) right away. It turns out that Mom thought they were SO cute they would look perfect on the shelf near the children’s books on display at the MOTAL mini-museum in Fullerton. Inadvertently, the official donation paperwork was never filled out and, as the years went by, the origin story for the dolls escaped everyone’s memory among volunteers and workers. Visitors have enjoyed seeing the dolls all these years. Well, since MOTAL always strives to be transparent about what goes on behind the scenes, here is the true confession. The guilty mom? Well, let’s just say her first name is Greta, and her daughter has forgiven her forgetfulness.