Here are 100 books that Tango Red Riding Hood fans have personally recommended if you like Tango Red Riding Hood. Book DNA is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Ra Pu Zel and the Stinky Tofu

Ana Velez Author Of The Three Little Guinea Pigs and the Andean Fox

From my list on retellings with characters out of character.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a Latina living in the US, I encounter stereotypes about me and my culture. I am sure I have my own blind spots around other cultures and people. So, I like stories that break traditional tropes. Initially, fairytales were dark and used as moral teaching tools full of warnings and fear. I prefer retellings that spread joy and challenge assumptions. Lastly, I love to discover new—real or imaginary—places through the illustrations and the artist’s point of view, especially if it influences the twist.

Ana's book list on retellings with characters out of character

Ana Velez Why Ana loves this book

Of the many retells I have read, this version turns the classic tale on its head the most. With my own reclusive artist tendencies, I found Ra Pu Zel’s wish for alone time to pursue her interests very alluring. I am always curious about new foods and I will set out to find stinky tofu in town, do I follow the smell? The art transports us to a setting with cultural and culinary delights.

By Ying Chang Compestine , Crystal Kung (illustrator) ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Ra Pu Zel and the Stinky Tofu as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 5, 6, 7, and 8.

What is this book about?

A playful, feminist retelling of Rapunzel with a Chinese-cuisine twist

The story of Rapunzel where she’s being locked in a tower by a witch is a good one—but it’s not totally the truth.

The real story is about a young princess in China named Ra Pu Zel who doesn’t want to talk to princes or look proper. What Pu Zel wants is to cook and eat in peace, her long hair neatly braided to keep it out of her food. And when she gets tired of everyone telling her what to do, she locks herself in a tower with her…


If you love Tango Red Riding Hood...

Book cover of Cinderelliot: A Scrumptious Fairytale

Cinderelliot by Mark Ceilley,

A gay retelling of the classic fairy tale--a scrumptious love story featuring ungrateful stepsiblings, a bake-off, and a fairy godfather.

Cinderelliot is stuck at home taking care of his ungrateful stepsister and stepbrother. When Prince Samuel announces a kingdom-wide competition to join the royal staff as his baker, the stepsiblings…

Book cover of Imagine a Wolf

Ana Velez Author Of The Three Little Guinea Pigs and the Andean Fox

From my list on retellings with characters out of character.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a Latina living in the US, I encounter stereotypes about me and my culture. I am sure I have my own blind spots around other cultures and people. So, I like stories that break traditional tropes. Initially, fairytales were dark and used as moral teaching tools full of warnings and fear. I prefer retellings that spread joy and challenge assumptions. Lastly, I love to discover new—real or imaginary—places through the illustrations and the artist’s point of view, especially if it influences the twist.

Ana's book list on retellings with characters out of character

Ana Velez Why Ana loves this book

I chuckled with this book because the wolf I imagined was not at all the wolf in the story. I thought it was clever to have him use his big teeth, big claws and big eyes to be crafty, creative and to help others. The illustrator does a great job of contrasting the black lines of the wolf with the colorful yarns to get the right mood across.

By Lucky Platt ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Imagine a Wolf as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 4, 5, 6, and 7.

What is this book about?

What do you see when you imagine a wolf?
Sharp, pointy teeth?
Big, hungry eyes?
A soft sweater and a friendly smile?

Wait a minute!

The wolf in this story would rather knit than huff, puff, or blow anyone's house down. But that doesn't stop the townsfolk from crying wolf anyway. What's a kind-hearted wolf to do when everyone keeps running and screaming at "Hello?" It's time to show the world that this wolf is the furthest thing from Big and Bad.


Book cover of Princesses Can Fix It!

Ana Velez Author Of The Three Little Guinea Pigs and the Andean Fox

From my list on retellings with characters out of character.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a Latina living in the US, I encounter stereotypes about me and my culture. I am sure I have my own blind spots around other cultures and people. So, I like stories that break traditional tropes. Initially, fairytales were dark and used as moral teaching tools full of warnings and fear. I prefer retellings that spread joy and challenge assumptions. Lastly, I love to discover new—real or imaginary—places through the illustrations and the artist’s point of view, especially if it influences the twist.

Ana's book list on retellings with characters out of character

Ana Velez Why Ana loves this book

I enjoyed how the characters in this story did not want to be confined to stereotypes, preferring to explore beyond their gender and princely station. They want to explore all their interests, from sewing to pulley building, in their own unique way. I found it hilarious that the “problem” to fix consisted of alligators out of their moat. The illustrations are super fun, with alligators hiding in the silliest places.

By Tracy Marchini , Julia Christians (illustrator) ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Princesses Can Fix It! as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 4, 5, 6, and 7.

What is this book about?

The castle is crawling with wayward alligators, and the clueless king doesn't know how to fix it. Lila, Margaret, and Harriet have lots of ideas, but their father won't listen! According to him, the Princesses should be focusing on proper pursuits like drawing, jewelry, and music. When the three girls start falling asleep during the day, the King sends the Prince to investigate .

What he discovers is that the three princesses are gathering at night to use their knowledge of the six simple machines to invent an ingenious alligator removal contraption in their secret workshop.

This STEAM-focused take on…


If you love Rachel Hobbs...

Book cover of One Giant Leap

One Giant Leap by Ben Gartner,

I’m pretty sure I’m about to die in space. And I just turned twelve and a half.

Blast off with the four winners of the StellarKid Project on a trip to the International Space Station and then to the Gateway outpost orbiting the Moon! It’s a dream come true until…

Book cover of The Totally NOT Wicked Stepmother

Ana Velez Author Of The Three Little Guinea Pigs and the Andean Fox

From my list on retellings with characters out of character.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a Latina living in the US, I encounter stereotypes about me and my culture. I am sure I have my own blind spots around other cultures and people. So, I like stories that break traditional tropes. Initially, fairytales were dark and used as moral teaching tools full of warnings and fear. I prefer retellings that spread joy and challenge assumptions. Lastly, I love to discover new—real or imaginary—places through the illustrations and the artist’s point of view, especially if it influences the twist.

Ana's book list on retellings with characters out of character

Ana Velez Why Ana loves this book

Even though the title hints at the storyline, I still enjoyed the main character’s discovery as she navigates her preconceived ideas about stepmoms to reach the conclusion that maybe they aren’t so evil after all. I would love to give this book to a couple of friends who are stepmoms, but it would be great for any blended family. The art matches the warm tone of the story with just enough hints of possible wickedness.

By Samantha Berger , Neha Rawat (illustrator) ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Totally NOT Wicked Stepmother as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 4, 5, 6, and 7.

What is this book about?

From acclaimed author and three-time Emmy-nominated writer Samantha Berger and rising star illustrator Neha Rawat comes a hilarious and heartwarming story that follows a young girl as she learns that her new stepmother might not be as evil or wicked as she originally seems. Perfect for newly blended families and a celebration of stepmothers and stepchildren everywhere!

When I first met my stepmother, I was a little suspicious. All stepmothers are supposed to be wicked! Evil! Downright B-A-D BAD! Or at least, that's what the stories say. So I thought I knew just what to expect from mine.

But my…


Book cover of Erotic Triangles: Sundanese Dance and Masculinity in West Java

Carol J. Pierce Colfer Author Of Masculinities in Forests: Representations of Diversity

From my list on diverse masculinities.

Why am I passionate about this?

I began studying women’s lives in college (1960s), but recently realized that I (like others) passed myself off as a gender specialist, but had been ignoring men’s roles, beliefs, and behaviour in gender dynamics. I was put off by the studies that too consistently showed men as always violent and controlling. Many studies emphasized men at war, men abusing women, and gay men with HIV/AIDS; there seemed no recognition of positive masculine traits. Recognizing also that men had different ideals about their own masculinity in different places, I examined men’s lives among international elites and in communities in the US, Sumatra, and Indonesia, where I’d done ethnographic research. 

Carol's book list on diverse masculinities

Carol J. Pierce Colfer Why Carol loves this book

Erotic Triangles returns to a part of the world I know well, though the topic is alien to my own natural resource emphasis. Yet I found it fascinating for its symbolic analyses of West Java’s musical and art worlds – intertwined intimately with the relations between men and women and among men. Its emphasis on triangles was the inspiration for me to structure my own analyses as a harp (another ‘triangle’), within which the strings signify traits that men value in a given culture. Spiller’s analysis inspired my own analogy between the creation of harp music and the clusters of values that influence men’s identities, their personal and cultural ‘songs.’

By Henry Spiller ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Erotic Triangles as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In West Java, Indonesia, all it takes is a woman's voice and a drumbeat to make a man get up and dance. Every day, men there - be they students, pedicab drivers, civil servants, or businessmen - breach ordinary standards of decorum and succumb to the rhythm at village ceremonies, weddings, political rallies, and nightclubs. The music the men dance to varies from traditional gong ensembles to the contemporary pop known as dangdut, but they consistently dance with great enthusiasm. In "Erotic Triangles", Henry Spiller draws on decades of ethnographic research to explore the reasons behind this phenomenon, arguing that…


Book cover of Max

Jacinta Bunnell Author Of A More Graceful Shaboom

From my list on LGBTQ in which no one gets bullied.

Why am I passionate about this?

I think Mother Goose got it all wrong. I have been creating books and coloring books for LGBTQ families for over two decades. I believe we deserve stories about LGBTQ children that are jubilant and adventurous; that are about love, mystery, time travel, and all the things everyone else treasures in their favorite books without being lesson books about bullying or being “different.” I have closed many children's books as soon as I get to the part where they are beaten up and made fun of for being gender non-conforming. I am also a visual artist and I love well-written books that are beautiful to look at.

Jacinta's book list on LGBTQ in which no one gets bullied

Jacinta Bunnell Why Jacinta loves this book

This is a perfectly charming story about a boy who is way into ballet and baseball, written in the 1970s, but which still holds up today. And no one ever makes fun of him. Max is not necessarily Queer, but I consider it in the canon of kid’s books that address gender identity.

By Rachel Isadora ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Max as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.


If you love Tango Red Riding Hood...

Book cover of Floretta

Floretta by Joan Budilovsky,

Floretta- the story of an old woman who discovers life beautifully anew thru the helping hands of a child. The chakra colors of dawn and twilight are woven through the pages as the cycle of life is magically composed. The subject of “heaven,” has the potential to open discussions with…

Book cover of Freestyle

Steph Mided Author Of Club Kick Out! Into the Ring

From my list on middle grade inspiring creativity in their readers.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been drawing and writing ever since I could hold a pencil, and a big inspiration for me to start my lifelong creative journey were graphic novels. So even as an adult, I love to read work from a wide range of genres and age ranges to see what my fellow authors and artists are up to. Especially making my own middle grade graphic novel series, I look up to so many of the authors and artists on this list and chances are you and your kids will too if you pick one of these up!

Steph's book list on middle grade inspiring creativity in their readers

Steph Mided Why Steph loves this book

Gale Galligan is another artist I’ve followed for a while now and it seems like everything they make just overflows with creativity and charm.

I love how Freestyle combines both dance and yo-yoing, two things I’d never think to put together, and makes it work so seamlessly. The book is just pure, vibrant, fun, and even as an adult I found myself going back and admiring the artwork and movement Gale portrays on every page. This is the kind of book that will have readers coming back again and again just to get wrapped up in its beautiful, vivid world. 

By Gale Galligan ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Freestyle as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 8, 9, 10, and 11.

What is this book about?

From bestselling author, Gale Galligan, comes a fun, high-energy
Graphic Novel about friendship, family, and school!


Cory's dance crew is getting ready for a major competition before
they leave year nine. The crew captain gets increasingly intense
about nailing the routine. And Cory's parents ground him for
not taking his marks seriously.

He ends up with a new tutor, Sunna, who he dismisses as a boring
nerd. until he catches her secretly practicing cool yo-yo tricks.
As his friendship with Sunna grows, he ends up missing practice
and bailing on his crew.

How is Cory supposed to balance the expectations…


Book cover of Samba: Resistance in Motion

Sara Delamont Author Of Embodying Brazil: An ethnography of diasporic capoeira

From my list on the African-Brazilian martial art capoeira.

Why am I passionate about this?

I've been studying capoeira in the UK since 2002. I've been welcomed into classes by teachers all over the UK. I have watched over 1,000. I have never practiced it myself but have worked with Neil Stephens, who learnt it seriously for seven years, and Mestre Claudio Campos who has taught capoeira here since 2003. I worked at Cardiff University from 1976 until I retired. I have also done a much smaller study of French kickboxing (Savate) for contrast. I was the first woman President of the British Educational Research Association in 1984, given the John Nisbet (Lifetime) Award of BERA in 2015 and the equivalent from the BSA (British Sociological Association) in 2013.

Sara's book list on the African-Brazilian martial art capoeira

Sara Delamont Why Sara loves this book

Barbara Browning is a professor of dance, and a capoeirista. She learnt capoeira in New York and took classes with two of the first Brazilians to teach there in the 1970s. 

This is a book about Samba (the Brazilian national dance) with one long chapter about capoeira. As a female dancer Browning came to capoeira, when women learners were rare in Brazil and in the USA, with a relevant skill.

Many women capoeira learners came from dance backgrounds whereas most male learners in the UK and USA find the dance side harder than the more martial element. Browning sets capoeira into its original Brazilian embodiment and against a North American embodiment.

By Barbara Browning ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Samba as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Browning's ability to write ethnography, to locate the subject in terms of, and against, such African-Diaspora questions as 'continuities' and 'acculturation', and to fashion a personal and lyrical narrative, opens up many possibilities." - David H. Brown. Barbara Browning combines a lyrical, personal narrative with incisive and theoretically sophisticated accounts of a number of Brazilian dance cultures, suggesting that often the dancing body articulates a political resistance that cannot be voiced in words. She presents a social history of the development of samba, the 'Brazilian national dance'; candombl , a syncretic, danced religion; capoeira, an acrobatic martial art; and a…


Book cover of Sensational Knowledge: Embodying Culture Through Japanese Dance

Bryan S. Turner Author Of The Body in Asia

From my list on making you wish you lived in Asia.

Why am I passionate about this?

As an undergraduate at the University of Leeds in the 1960s the principal influence on my life and thinking was Trevor Ling an Anglican Priest and Buddhist who eventually became a Professor of comparative religion at the University of Manchester. He was the start of my research on Islam and Asia and my peripatetic career having lived in Scotland, Germany, Holland, America, Australia and Singapore. I became a professor of the sociology of religion in the Asia Research Center at the National University of Singapore. I have published two books on Singapore, a handbook of religions in Asia, and several works on the body, medicine, ageing and human vulnerability.

Bryan's book list on making you wish you lived in Asia

Bryan S. Turner Why Bryan loves this book

It concerns the complex and demanding process of becoming proficient in dance procedures. The stages involve becoming deeply mindful of the body. The novice has to become attached and subordinated to a ‘master’ who can of course be a woman. Through these rituals the novice becomes enculturated into the dance aesthetic and the wider culture. The core energy required by dance comes from the abdomen to empower the dancer. The training involves self-cultivation. Eventually the mind no longer hinders the expressivity of the body.

By Tomie Hahn ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Sensational Knowledge as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

How do music and dance reveal the ways in which a community interacts with the world? How are the senses used in communicating cultural knowledge? In Sensational Knowledge, ethnomusicologist and dancer Tomie Hahn uncovers the process and nuances of learning nihon buyo, a traditional Japanese dance form. She uses case studies of dancers at all levels, as well as her own firsthand experiences, to investigate the complex language of bodies, especially across cultural divides. Paying particular attention to the effect of body-to-body transmission, and how culturally constructed processes of transmission influence our sense of self, Hahn argues that the senses…


If you love Rachel Hobbs...

Book cover of A Foot is Not a Fish!

A Foot is Not a Fish! by Cornelia Maude Spelman,

In a time of alternative facts and the loss of a shared sense of reality, A Foot is Not a Fish playfully illustrates the difference between what is true and what is not through absurd fun comparisons that every child—and parent—will instantly understand.

This book playfully illustrates common truths by…

Book cover of Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History

Elizabeth Wayland Barber Author Of The Dancing Goddesses: Folklore, Archaeology, and the Origins of European Dance

From my list on European dance in female fertility and health.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m an information junkie who loves to dance. I fell in love with folk dancing at age 6, European archaeology at 11, linguistics and cognition at 21—and could never drop any of them. My scientist-father always said, “Follow the problem, not the discipline,” and I began to see how these fields could help answer each other’s questions. Words can survive for millennia—with information about what archaeologists don’t find, like oh-so-perishable cloth. Determining how to reconstruct prehistoric textiles (Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years) then led me to trace the origins of various European folk costumes, and finally even to reconstruct something about the origins of the dances themselves.

Elizabeth's book list on European dance in female fertility and health

Elizabeth Wayland Barber Why Elizabeth loves this book

I selected this book because it finally offered me some answers to questions I’d asked myself all my life: Why am I so driven to dance? Why does dancing make me feel so euphoric? McNeill found himself asking this last question when forced to go through endless military close-order drill (a sort of dance!) as a young draftee. Whence these surprisingly positive effects of “keeping together in time”? Over the course of his later life as a historian, he tracked down a fascinating array of anecdotal and cognitive answers.  The relation of this phenomenon to unique details of how the human brain is put together was then further addressed by Oliver Sacks toward the end of his book Musicophilia, where I first learned of McNeill.

By William H. McNeill ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Keeping Together in Time as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Could something as simple and seemingly natural as falling into step have marked us for evolutionary success? In Keeping Together in Time one of the most widely read and respected historians in America pursues the possibility that coordinated rhythmic movement--and the shared feelings it evokes--has been a powerful force in holding human groups together.As he has done for historical phenomena as diverse as warfare, plague, and the pursuit of power, William H. McNeill brings a dazzling breadth and depth of knowledge to his study of dance and drill in human history. From the records of distant and ancient peoples to…


Book cover of Ra Pu Zel and the Stinky Tofu
Book cover of Imagine a Wolf
Book cover of Princesses Can Fix It!

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Interested in dancing, wolves, and grandmothers?

Dancing 38 books
Wolves 137 books
Grandmothers 56 books