Little Red Hat by Bridget Irving

Author interview

As an artist and illustrator, Bridget Irving believes that when images of animals are created, there is a responsibility to the real animals whose likenesses are used. Based in the UK, Bridget created the children’s book, Little Red Hat, to counter the representation of wolves as ‘monstrous’ and ‘grotesque’ in children’s stories, particularly in Little Red Riding Hood. Please visit Bridget’s online store to order a copy of her book, Little Red Hat, and Hopping Mad, written by Lisa Hannaford that Bridget illustrated. Both books encourage kindness toward Nature. Also, look for my favourite, a poster and t-shirt celebrating gulls!

Please describe how your interest in art and how it began. What are your views about the role of art in society?

Like many of us, if not all, I loved drawing as a kid. This is a common answer by illustrators. It started when we were children. This is when we all begin to be creative. And I wish to encourage drawing in all of us, in children and adults, to draw and create for the joy of it, for the process, letting go of the pressure of outcomes. Now, I draw professionally and study drawing academically, but I have always been involved in visual communication and pictures in one form or another. I worked as a scientific photographer and web designer. I like this mix, where art and science meet, and where creativity and techniques meet. My interest lies in understanding where illustration and culture intersect and how one impacts the other in the context of animals and animal rights.

Art is vital in society for those who practise it and those affected by it. All of us. Art is a way to share ideas and express ourselves. Art and well-being are inextricably linked. Like written language, art is a form of speech. It reflects the beliefs of the society in which we grow up, and it can repeat those beliefs or challenge them, consciously and unconsciously. So, I have become an avid explorer of how visual language affects our beliefs about animals and how that impacts our thoughts and treatment of them.

I’m inspired by art activists such as Sue Coe and vegan picture book maker Roger Olmos. I’m also influenced by the work of people like Quentin Blake, Beatrix Potter, and E.H. Shepherd, who illustrated Winnie the Pooh. Also, the early Disney films Bambi and Dumbo, I’m sure, mark the start of my vegan outlook on life.

How did your concern for animals begin? How has your understanding of our relationship with animals developed over the years?

I had been vegetarian for most of my adult life but became vegan and actively involved in animal advocacy ten years ago. Becoming vegan coincided with a major upheaval in my life when I adopted Benny, a small and senior Yorkshire terrier. Benny had had a difficult life. He was severely neglected, with one eye, no lower jaw and skin issues. I loved him immediately and adopted him from a rescue centre that also rescued farm animals. His foster family were vegan. I admired these people so much that I committed to veganism there and then. They remain close friends and continue to inspire me. I treasure these connections with like-minded people. It turned out that Benny’s skin issues were due to an allergy to meat protein. So, he and I began our vegan journey together. Bugsy Dog followed Benny, and through his senior adoption, I learned just how vulnerable animals are in human hands. Even when people do their best, animals are too easily exploited and left to struggle in a world they cannot cope with. Sadly, beautiful Benny and Bugsy are gone now. You might spot their likenesses in the drawings of the wolf cubs in Little Red Hat.

I recognise my lifelong love for animals. I always felt a sense of kinship and protection. Growing up, I had all the books about animals I could collect and watched everything David Attenborough and Jacques Cousteau made. However, one day, I realised I knew almost nothing about the stories of animals forced to live under human control. I walked past an Animal Aid stall on the street. The images of vivisection and animal enslavement still haunt me. Images are powerful. It’s hard to explain it all, but like most vegans, my only regret is not doing it sooner, not being active sooner. This regret, in some ways, motivates me now.

Your book is called Little Red Hat. This is, on one level, a children’s book, but on another, I found the narrative compelling and provocative. Please say more about what the book conveys.

Thank you, Kim. It’s great to receive this kind of feedback. It means a lot to me. Making Little Red Hat wasn’t easy or straightforward. I sometimes wondered if I could ever finish it. I aimed to layer meaning into the narrative and the illustrations, but it still needed to make sense and be simple and enjoyable.

The story is built upon ideas from the study of meaning and storytelling. Much of my inspiration is drawn from a book called Animals Erased by Professor Arran Stibbe of Gloucester University. In it, he writes about how language objectifies animals, dismisses their suffering, and perpetuates ideas that seem common sense within society. His ideas about seeing the world from more ecological and compassionate perspectives and using language greatly influenced the narrative within Little Red Hat. For example, I avoided the traditional fairytale plot of protagonist versus antagonist and did my best with an Eastern narrative technique called Kishotenketsu. This helped bring the storyline full circle. I also deliberately included the wolf with a family. Traditionally Red has a family including a grandmother, but the wolf is falsely depicted as a lone stalker. In reality, wolves live in families not packs, with one breeding pair, and they are extraordinary parents. Family, in all the ways that can mean, and belonging, are important themes of the book. I also purposefully illustrated the wolves living wolf lives without including humans in the illustrations. I wanted to show the value that wolves hold for their own lives and not what they mean to humans.

During the research, I came across contemporary award-winning rewrites of Red Riding Hood, where Red cuts out the conventional male rescuer and kills the wolf herself. This idea doesn’t align with my values. I asked, when anything can happen in picturebooks, why are we still killing the wolf?

I recognised that this singular view didn’t change anything. The story remains tragically the same. I thought too for a long time about how to include and describe the adult character in the book. I wanted to draw the father figure and portray him as a guardian. Not as a killer. In the end, I chose to include the mother character. In some ways, she is me, an advocate and protector of my characters. She is also my mum, who died before I finished Little Red Hat.

Why did you create Little Red Hat? What do you seek to accomplish? Is this a book only for young readers?

Little Red Hat was the culmination of my MA in Visual Communication. I set out to tell the wolf’s story but soon realised I wanted to retell both the wolf’s and the child’s stories. I see them as connected, friends, not enemies. But I wanted to do this with a safe encounter between the two. Safe for the vulnerable child and the endangered wolf. So, Red has a toy wolf, and the ‘real’ wolves remain outside.

In my fact-finding, I learned more about the horrors of wolf hunting, deforestation and habitat loss. I also discovered that a friend’s daughter had become afraid of wolves even though her only encounter was most likely to ever be in books. Children are often introduced to the ‘big bad wolf’ at a very young age, and I wanted to protest that negative image. I also wanted to acknowledge the positive connections between children, animals and picturebooks. The three are frequently bound together, where children feel a kinship with animals. I wanted to protect that in some way.

I visited Britain’s secret wolf sanctuary and watched George Monbiot’s documentary Where Wolves Change Rivers. I learned of the indoctrination of children into killing wolves in America. I learned of the tragedy of Takaya, the seawolf, shot by a woman for no reason other than the desire to kill. I learned about wolf ear positions and how they convey fear or ease, for example. I drew the ears on Red’s hat to mimic these expressions. This helped show the child’s feelings whilst drawing comparisons between human and wolf emotions. This connection became the title and follows traditions of naming conventions of the myriad versions of Red Riding Hood.

In the end, it doesn’t matter if all the layers and meanings are noticed or not, but they are there. I asked myself too, in how many other picturebooks would it be tolerable to promote the killing of an animal? Perhaps the original oral folklore was simply a warning to stay away from wild animals, but the wolf has become a victim of metaphor, ridicule and stereotyping. I wanted to counter all of this. Ultimately, I wanted to show that humans are the threat to wolves and not the other way around.

Picturebooks are intended for children, but they reach a broad grown-up audience too. There are the makers, publishers, printers, sellers and, of course, the parent, guardian reader and book buyer. I want to reach them all. Even though I made a children’s book about change, I don’t agree with the idea that ecological change lies in children’s hands. Responsibility right now lies with adults, with governments and global business, with those who hold power, and that isn’t children. So, I made Little Red Hat for animals and children, to advocate for them both. It is essentially a book about freedom.

From your perspective as an artist and animal advocate, how do you feel about the future of humanity, the lives of animals, and the future of the planet?

Wow, this is a big question. Some days, I feel almost hopeless for animals, people and the planet. It seems virtually impossible for humanity to overcome cruelty, greed, and suffering. The problems can seem insurmountable. It is easy to wonder what difference we can make as individuals. I have those days you have described as Misanthropic Bunker days. It seems impossible to challenge those we see as responsible for so much world pain and how they make us complicit in it. Then, I have hope again. There is so much good. So much. I feel proud to be joining the voices, long-established and new ones, who are speaking up for animals and change. I understand that we must be relentless in sharing the truths of animal lives. We must drown out the dominant messages that obfuscate the horrors for animals, that make everything seem OK for them, and tell us that animals are here for us. We must resist all this and find alternative and truthful ways to think about and speak about animals.

I wanted to have a traditional happy conclusion to Little Red Hat. Not only for the reader but also for hope and a call for action, should the reader wish that. While I say that adults are the guardians of children and change, the last scene encourages the beginnings of creative activism in the young reader. The white space in the book is deliberate to encourage drawing. Yes, to challenging conventions! And, yes, to drawing in picturebooks! I feel optimistic at these times when I have hope, when I am drawing and when I am connecting with other advocates and activists. I think Little Red Hat conveys all this in a gentle way. It’s a lot to ask of one little book but I think she does it.