Can You Choose Your Muse? Little Red Rhyming Hood by Sue Fliess

Once upon a time there was a girl who spoke only in rhyme.

Little Red's problem is that she's a poet. And the kids in her class know it. Everything she tries to say just happens to come out that way!

"Want to ride the swings with me?
Race our bikes or climb a tree?

It's a talent that can be enjoyable, but a problem when it's unavoidable. Constant versification doesn't make for good conversation. People find it off-putting to rhyme ALL THE TIME, and at school Brad Wolf, the class bully, makes it his job to point that out.

Brad the Bad makes Red sad. She hurries to hide at Grandma's house every day after school. Grandma tries to help by making her a pretty red hoodie, but when Red wears it to school, the kids call her Little Red Rhyming Hood. But then one day Grandma has something else for her--

A flyer for a poetry contest!

"Maybe I'll meet kids like me,
Who also speak in poetry!"

Full of hope, Little Red heads for the contest, not dozing but busy composing, when Bad Brad Wolf jumps out and scares her big time.

"EEK!" Red shrieked.

"Sweet sonnets, Brad. You startled me!
Were you crouched behind that... bush?

Must we now suppose Rhyming Red can only speak in prose? Yes, the curse is re-versed! Now Bad Brad can only speak in verse!

"Help me! Make it go away!
I don't want to rhyme all day!"

Red once longed to lose her talent for rhyming,
But this is a case of very bad timing!

It's a jolly elaboration on the value of collaboration, in this novel take-off on the Red Riding Hood trope. Rhyming Red and Bad Brad Wolf wind up cozy when they merge their poesy to take the poetry prize, in Sue Fliess' clever-as-ever latest, Little Red Rhyming Hood Albert Whitman and Company, 2019). Working with artist Petro Boulobasis, her collaborator in their 2018 hit, Mary Had a Little Lab, (see review here), there is playful wordsmithery and comic illustrative skill in this tale of making the best of the curse of verse.