Little Red Rodent Hood Read online

  DIAL BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

  PENGUIN YOUNG READERS GROUP

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, NY 10014

  Copyright © 2018 by Ursula Vernon

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Vernon, Ursula, author, illustrator. | Title: Little Red Rodent Hood / Ursula Vernon.

  Description: New York, NY : Dial Books for Young Readers, [2018] | Series: Hamster princess ; 6 | Summary: A little girl in a red cape asks for Princess Harriet Hamsterbone’s help with a pack of weasel-wolves who want to eat her grandmother, but after meeting everyone, Harriet is not sure who to trust.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018009478 | ISBN 9780399186585 (hardback) | ISBN 9780399186608 (ebook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Princesses—Fiction. | Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. | Hypnotism—Fiction. | Kidnapping—Fiction. | Hamsters—Fiction. | Humorous stories. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Fairy Tales & Folklore / Adaptations. | JUVENILE FICTION / Animals / Mice, Hamsters, Guinea Pigs, etc.. | JUVENILE FICTION / Humorous Stories. | Classification: LCC PZ7.V5985 Lit 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018009478

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  For all the little girls who grew up wanting to be werewolves.

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  HARRIET HAMSTER BONE IS A STAR!

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER 1

  Princess Harriet? Princess Harriet?”

  Harriet Hamsterbone—princess, warrior, breaker of curses, and recreational cliff-diver—looked up from where she was practicing her sword work on a dummy. “Eh? What?”

  She was working in the courtyard of her father’s castle. A small hamster stood in the entryway, wearing a red cloak. The hood was drawn down, but even so, Harriet could see that she was very young.

  “Princess Harriet?” The little girl had a high, lisping voice, of the sort that adults thought was adorable and precious and that made other kids immediately suspicious.

  Harriet stopped and wiped the sweat from her fur. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m looking for . . .” The girl trailed off. “Err . . . why are you hitting that dummy with a sword?”

  “In case you’re attacked by dummies?” asked the girl.

  “Because the dummy’s the only one that will hold still,” said Harriet’s best friend, Wilbur, who was reading a book on the sidelines. He looked up. “When she comes after me with a sword, I scream and run away.”

  “Then you must be Princess Harriet,” said the girl with relief. “Thank goodness! You’re supposed to be the best, nicest, kindest, sweetest, most wonderful princess in the whole world!”

  “. . . uh,” said Harriet. She would have accepted “fiercest” or “bravest,” but “kindest” and “sweetest” were definitely stretching things.

  “I have a terrible problem!” the little girl said. “They’re after my grandmother!”

  Wilbur and Harriet looked at her blankly.

  “You have to save her! She’s all I’ve got!”

  “Who’s ‘they’?” asked Wilbur.

  “Where’s your grandmother?” asked Harriet.

  The little girl sighed. “It’s complicated.”

  “Start at the beginning,” suggested Wilbur.

  “Or start at the point where you need me to hit something with a sword,” said Harriet. Harriet had what her old teachers would call “a straightforward personality with clearly defined goals.”

  “We just moved here, but there’s a huge horrible one in the woods! The biggest one I’ve ever seen! And a bunch of others too. They’re lurking around my grandmother’s cottage!”

  “They’re lurkers, all right,” said Harriet, narrowing her eyes. “And you say there are a lot?”

  “Packs and packs. But there’s a big one in charge! Huge! Awful! Smelly!”

  Harriet’s mind filled with visions of a coming invasion. “A horde of weasel-wolves?”

  “Err . . .” said Wilbur. “Are you sure maybe you and your grandmother shouldn’t move out of the cottage? If there are so many?”

  “Grandmother can’t leave the cottage,” said the little girl primly. “She’s not well. I take care of her.”

  “So you walked here all by yourself?” said Wilbur, astonished. “Past all the weasel-wolves?”

  “Yes?” said the little girl.

  “You’re awfully young to be alone in the woods,” said Wilbur, which was true, but not the sort of thing that it would occur to Harriet to say.

  “They’re only really dangerous at night,” said the girl. “I need to get back before it’s dark, though. In fact, I should leave now.”

  “We’ll go with you,” said Harriet. “Give me five minutes to clean up and get my good sword.”

  The little girl in red tapped her foot impatiently the whole time. Harriet and Wilbur saddled up their riding quail and followed her down the road.

  “Qwerk!” said Mumfrey, Harriet’s riding quail, who didn’t like weasel-wolves at all.

  “Qwerr-rr-rrk,” said Hyacinth, Wilbur’s riding quail, who liked weasel-wolves even less than Mumfrey did.

  “Oh, what beautiful quail!” said the little girl, flinging her arms around Hyacinth’s neck. “Aren’t they just the bestest, most wonderful quail in the whole world?”

  “Qwerk?” said Hyacinth, which was Quail for “Err, I guess?”

  Mumfrey looked suspiciously at the little girl. “Qwerk,” he said, not quite under his breath.

  “Problem?” said Harriet.

  “. . . Qwerk . . .” said Mumfrey, which was Quail for “No . . . I guess that’s something a normal person would say . . . maybe . . .”

  Harriet followed his gaze to the little girl. She came up to the middle of Harriet’s chest and her cloak was blazing scarlet, the color of poppies. It wasn’t the sort of thing you’d wear in the woods if you were trying to be sneaky. People could probably see that cloak from the next kingdom.

  Still, she needed help. Harriet was the princess, so it was her job to take care of t
he people in her kingdom, and that meant finding out why the weasel-wolves were harassing innocent grandmothers in the woods.

  They passed the tiny village of Lonesquash and looked down the road toward the forest. The countryside was tranquil, with broad farm fields and narrow bands of shaded woodland. Grain waved gently in the fields, almost up to the edge of the woods. It did not look like the sort of place where you expected to find a gathering army of weasel-wolves.

  Still, Harriet knew that danger could lurk in the most unexpected places. You always had to be on your guard.

  “So you live out here?” asked Wilbur.

  “Oh, no,” said Red. “I wish we did. It’s so pretty and nice! But we live in the woods. Which are also pretty and nice, I guess. If you like trees.” She looked briefly doubtful. “Which I do.”

  “Trees are nice,” offered Wilbur.

  “Yes! And these are the bestest, nicest, most wonderful trees in the whole wide world!”

  “And you live there with your grandmother?”

  “Yes! She’s the bestest, nicest, kindest grandmother—”

  “In the whole wide world?” finished Harriet.

  “Yes! How did you know?”

  “Lucky guess,” said Harriet. She spurred Mumfrey and they trotted down the road and into the forest.

  CHAPTER 2

  The weasel-wolves were not hard to find.

  Actually, they were pretty hard to miss. The road to the cottage had trees on both sides, and lurking behind each tree was a weasel-wolf.

  Harriet put her hand on her sword and narrowed her eyes.

  It was odd, though. They didn’t actually look dangerous. There were no glaring eyes or gleaming fangs, and nobody seemed to be obviously slavering for hamster meat.

  Instead, they looked worried.

  “It’s weird,” said Wilbur as they kept riding. “They don’t look like they’re about to attack.”

  “Qweerrrkkkk . . .” muttered Hyacinth. She kept trying to inch away from the trees, which didn’t work very well because then she was closer to the trees on the other side of the road.

  “They’re weasel-wolves,” said Harriet. “They’re always about to attack. I once walked through the middle of a pack while they were sleeping and they attacked in their sleep.”

  The little girl tromping down the path ahead of them didn’t seem frightened. Red glared at the wolves as if they had personally offended her.

  Harriet slowed the quail and looked around.

  The weasel-wolves in the woods all immediately attempted to look like bushes or trees or bits of moss. They weren’t very good at it.

  “Hurry up!” called Red. “For the best princess in the whole wide world, you’re really slow!”

  “Look,” said Harriet, annoyed, “something really weird is going on here and we’re all trying to pretend like it’s not, which is stupid. Why aren’t they attacking?”

  “Then why did you come and ask for help?” asked Harriet, baffled.

  “You should be scared!” added Wilbur, who was having a hard time staying in the saddle, as Hyacinth wobbled from one side of the path to the other. “Weasel-wolves are scary!”

  “These aren’t,” said Red, over her shoulder. “These are just normal weasel-wolves. Some of them are even sort of cute. It’s the big one you have to worry about!”

  “The leader,” said Red darkly. “When he shows up, then it’ll be dangerous. He’s the worst and meanest and stinkiest! And he only comes out at night!”

  “Qwerrrrk . . .” said Mumfrey, which was Quail for “I don’t like the sound of this . . .”

  Harriet frowned.

  She looked over at the weasel-wolves in the trees. The weasel-wolves had bunched up into a large group. She had to admit, they still didn’t look hostile, though. They looked like small children who had lost their parents somewhere in a crowd and didn’t know where to go next.

  Harriet wasn’t used to weasel-wolves that didn’t attack. It made her wonder what on earth was going on.

  “I liked it better when they tried to eat me,” she said to Wilbur. “Then I waved my sword around and they waved their claws around, and everybody knew where they stood.”

  “Errr . . .” Wilbur wasn’t sure what to say about that. He rather liked not being attacked, but the weasel-wolves were certainly acting strange.

  Harriet scowled, then came to a decision. “Hold up, Red!” she called. “I want to see what’s going on with these weasel-wolves.”

  “Maybe you should go on ahead,” said Wilbur. “Except—err—well, no, they might attack, so maybe don’t—” He floundered. Obviously the little girl had already walked through the gathered weasel-wolves, so she couldn’t be in that much danger, could she?

  Harriet had no such concerns. “Run along to your grandmother’s house, then,” she said, drawing her sword. “We’ll meet you there when we can.”

  “Ugh!” said Red. Then she cleared her throat. “I mean, okay, Princess! But please come quickly, before they eat my grandmother!”

  She hurried away.

  “Look out!” said Wilbur. “There’s two weasel-wolves . . . in front . . . of you . . .”

  He trailed off. Red was walking right up to them, without a trace of fear.

  Harriet started forward, sword at the ready.

  The little girl stared at the weasel-wolves.

  She was tiny compared to them and all she did was stare, but both the weasels inched backward.

  Harriet couldn’t blame them. There was something disturbingly intense about that stare. Red looked as if she were glaring into their very souls.

  They slunk into the woods, making small, whimpering noises.

  Red made a sound like “Hmmf!” and stomped down the road.

  * * *

  • • •

  As soon as Red had vanished, a sigh went through the weasel-wolves. It sounded almost like . . . relief?

  Hyacinth the quail was in no mood to feel relieved. She qwerked and bounced up and down on her toes anxiously, ready to run.

  “Err . . . Harriet?” said Wilbur. “Is this a good idea?”

  “There is something very weird going on here!” hissed Harriet. “That is a very strange little girl!”

  Wilbur frowned. “I thought she was very sweet.”

  “You would.”

  “What’s that supposed to—no.” Wilbur held up a hand. “Let’s not do this while we’re surrounded by predators!”

  “That’s the other weird bit! The weasel-wolves! They aren’t supposed to be scared of little girls staring at them! They attack people.”

  “Sometimes, yeah. I mean, so do you, though.”

  “Hey! I only attack bad people!”

  Wilbur waited.

  “Fine, fine, one time it was some actors, but it was a really realistic dragon costume and I didn’t realize it was actually four rats in a suit. And I did apologize. And Dad paid for the repairs to the papier-mâché.”

  “I don’t think these are weasel costumes. But—hsst! What are they doing?”

  The weasel-wolves had begun to move. One by one, they pulled back, leaving a broad corridor down the middle of the pack.

  Down that corridor came the biggest weasel-wolf that Harriet had ever seen.

  CHAPTER 3

  He was huge, bigger than Harriet, and dark gray, the color of storm clouds. He had a black mask, like most weasel-wolves, but also black paws and a black tail.

  The gray weasel-wolf moved toward them, eyes fixed on the hamsters.

  “Right,” said Harriet, holding up her sword. “That’s far enough.”

  He stopped.

  They stared at each other for a moment that seemed to stretch out further and further. Hyacinth shifted her feet nervously. Mumfrey flicked his curved topknot back and forth.

  “The bi
g one,” said Wilbur. “Red said he only came out at night!”

  Harriet didn’t want to take her eyes off the weasel-wolf, but she could see by the shadows that it was still only late afternoon. “Does he know that?”

  The big weasel-wolf sat up on his hind legs and said something that sounded like “growrr-growwwfff-grlllf!”

  “Okay,” said Harriet. “Uh.” She looked at Wilbur. Wilbur shrugged helplessly. He didn’t speak Weasel-wolf any more than she did.

  “Grrawwlf!”

  “What do you think he’s saying?” whispered Wilbur.

  “How should I know? I left my Weasel-wolf dictionary at home!”

  The big gray weasel-wolf in front sighed, then turned and barked at the ones behind him.

  There was a stir in the ranks, and two weasel-wolves slunk forward. One was holding a . . . a . . .

  “Is that a sheet of paper?” whispered Wilbur. “And a crayon? Where did weasel-wolves get crayons?”

  “Maybe they ate someone with a crayon,” said Harriet darkly.

  The weasel-wolves set them down in front of the big gray one, who nodded. He glanced up at Harriet, then back down at the paper. Then he picked the crayon up in his mouth and began to draw.

  Harriet was impressed despite herself. Drawing with a crayon in your mouth had to be nearly impossible. Nevertheless, the gray weasel-wolf finished in a few moments, then sat back.

  One of his—henchweasels? Harriet didn’t know what to call them—picked up the paper. Unlike the others, this one was so small that Harriet could have lifted it up with one hand. It was barely half the size of Wilbur, and not even Hyacinth could find it scary.

  It carried the paper forward, slinking lower and lower, until it was practically flat on the ground.