Leaving her three children home alone in the country, a woman departs to spend the day with their grandmother Po Po. Although instructed by their mother to latch the door at sunset, the children are persuaded by a wolf disguised as their grandmother to open the door. Chinese panel art is recognizable in the book's overall design and in the layout of the watercolor and pastel art created to illustrate the more than thousand-year-old tale. The wolf symbolizes an ominous side of human nature and appears as either a shadowlike possibility or presence in each double-page spread of this suspenseful book. (Ages 5-9)