A Wolf With Less of an Attitude : Literature: Golden Books puts a new spin on fairy tales by publishing its first line of nonviolent children’s books.

A wild animal enters the home of an elderly woman, attacks and devours her. And when her little granddaughter arrives, she is eaten as well.

In another part of town, a group of tiny friends is tricked by a sly stranger into taking a shortcut through a cave--only to be trapped and killed.

If you like these stories--and no, they are not from yesterday’s news--then the traditional tales of “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Chicken Little” are just for you.

But if you like something softer and sillier, then Golden Books has what you’re looking for. The Wisconsin-based publisher of children’s books has issued the first line of nonviolent fairy tales in its 85-year history.

No longer will Red Riding Hood’s grandma be dined on by a wolf (although his tummy still growls). In the new Golden Sound Story version, she’s not even mildly assaulted. While the wolf is acting out his natural aggressive tendencies (and wearing a non-threatening pair of cute red sneakers), grandma is hiding in a closet sewing a scary ghost costume to frighten the wolf away.

And Chicken Little? Well, the sky may indeed be falling in the 1990s, but it won’t hurt anybody in this version of the story. Once Little and her feathered friends accidentally knock the fox on the head with a cookbook, he has too big a headache to hunt them down and kill them.

Golden Books is not the first to rehabilitate fairy tales, but it may be the first to avoid the decades-old debate over which is better: beauty or truth.

It is offering kids--and their parents--violent or nonviolent reading.

“We believe the choice depends upon the child,” says Margaret Snyder, managing editor. “Some children may well be more sensitive than others to the violent images of these classic stories.

“But it’s been the parents who asked for this. There is a new breed of parents today who say the last thing in the world they want is to open a book and find someone getting cooked in a pot.”

During the 1950s, the debate raged over the effects of the Brothers Grimm’s Teutonic tales. Since then, any number of classics have been criticized for such modern offenses as failing to enhance creativity, discourage violence or promote sexual equality.

Red Riding Hood, for example, has been attacked almost annually for some real or imagined social transgression. In 1984, a fairy tale analyst announced that her red cap symbolized menstruation and that her encounter with the wolf was actually a rape.

Golden Books writers continue to explore the possible reconstruction of other tales. “We tried to redo ‘The Gingerbread Man,’ ” says Snyder, “but if this bready little guy doesn’t get eaten, the story loses a lot of its flavor, so to speak.”

In his book “The Uses of Enchantment,” legendary psychologist Bruno Bettelheim defended the violence in fairy tales for providing children with “clear-cut lines between right and wrong.” He argued that children find release in seeing their fears externalized, then resolved.

And no one can argue that there isn’t a certain inner satisfaction to be derived from the just punishments inflicted on witches, giants and other evil creatures. Ah, to boil a villain in oil, drown a wolf in a sack, force a wicked queen to dance in red hot iron shoes. . . .

Now, who says we need happier endings?

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Research librarian Joyce Pinney contributed to this story.