The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids

This is the whole tale, the same ten pages it runs in Pillowbook on the phone. Not a word is cut, and nothing asks you to sign up. The first three pages carry the paintings they were given; the rest of the plates are in the app, where the book is read one page to a screen.

Reading time is about five minutes at an unhurried pace, one page every thirty seconds or so. The wolf gets in by trickery and the kids hide. All seven are found.

The wolf went down to the shop and ate a whole lump of chalk, which is not pleasant, and it did what he wanted it to do. He came back up the hill and knocked again, and this time the voice through the door was soft and quite reasonable. But he had put one paw up on the window sill while he waited, and the paw was grey and very large.

"That is not our mother's foot," said the one in the green scarf, "our mother's foot is white," and they did not open. So the wolf went round to the mill, and put both front paws in the flour bin, and came out looking like something that had been iced for a party. He walked back up the hill on the sides of his feet, being careful.

The third time the voice was soft and the paw on the sill was white, and the smallest one said afterwards that she had known anyway, but nobody was listening to the smallest one just then. The bolt went back. The door came in with the wolf behind it. Seven kids went in seven directions at once, which is the only thing that saves anybody.

One got under the table, one behind the door, one into the cupboard, one under the washtub, one into the woodbox, one flat behind the curtain. The youngest ran for the tall clock in the corner, got the case open, climbed in among the weights, and pulled it shut. Then the kitchen was completely quiet, and the wolf stood in the middle of it.

He was too pleased with himself to search properly. He looked in the pot. He looked up the chimney and got soot on his chalk-white paws. He said "come out" twice in a friendly voice, which never works. Then he decided they must have gone with their mother, and went out to the yard, and lay down under the pear tree, and fell asleep.

When the goat came up the lane the door was open and the house was silent, and she stood in her own kitchen and could not make a sound. Then the clock case creaked, and one eye looked out at her, and then the whole of the smallest one. After that they came out of everywhere — the tub, the woodbox, the cupboard — all talking at the same time.

They took every pot and lid in the house out to the pear tree and let go all at once. The wolf came off the ground with all four feet, went over the wall without touching it, and was last seen at the top of the hill still gathering speed. They had supper very late, with the lamp lit and the door bolted, and seven scarves on seven pegs by the door.

The end.