Little Red By Kerry Gilbert Mother Tongue Publishing, 106 pages, $19.95

In her third poetry collection, Kerry Gilbert invokes the story of Red Riding Hood as a frame for exploring the dangers children face and the fears of parents who worry about keeping them safe. In part, the book is a contemporary recasting of the classic folktale: Scarlet is warned by her mother “hold your phone close…avoid alleys/don’t make eye contact” and the wolf is a predatory exchange student from Germany who stirs a date-rape drug into her drink. The Vernon, B.C. poet juxtaposes passages on this overarching theme with poems of parental anxiety about other threats, ranging from car accidents to wildfires. Even the sound of sirens in a suburb “where front doors are double locked/and rooms are babyproofed” evokes alarm. “I see story in details,” Gilbert writes; and indeed, many of the poems bristle with stark, unsettling images, such as “a used condom found/at the edge of an elementary school.”