The Little Bookroom

chickens in mind

As this week's books suggest, chickens are good for thinking with. They show up in proverbial thinking too. Don't count your chickens before they hatch. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Whistling girls and crowing hens always come to some bad end.

Having thought all week about chickens on the run, it seems only right to observe that more and more people--at least in my neck of the woods--are keeping chickens in the city. Right here in Portland, you follow one family's progress as they share their experience on the www.enviromom.com site. More specifically: http://www.enviromom.com/chicken_mom/index.html. Inspired to do the same? Look at The City Chicken: http://home.centurytel.net/thecitychicken/index.html, or at Backyard Chickens: www.backyardchickens.com/.

Eggs are associated with spring because chickens need sufficient exposure to light in order to lay. When daylight hours increase in the spring, egg production returns or rises, hence the association of eggs, fertility, and spring holidays like Pesach and Easter.

Want to share one more book with your kids? Look for Ruth Heller's Chickens Aren't the Only Ones, at once a celebration and exploration of the many creatures who lay eggs, ll done in verse.

Happy spring!

questing

Olivier Dunrea. Hanne's Quest. New York: Philomel Books, 2006.

Hanne is the smallest and youngest of the Scaldy hens belonging to Mem Pockets, so young that she has not yet begun to lay eggs--far younger than the venerable Old Pegotty. And it is Old Pegotty who tells the other hens, when Mem Pockets discovers that back taxes may consume her farm, that one among them has the power to save the farm by laying three golden eggs. Not just any one of them, of course. The chosen one must have been hatched under the New Moon. She must be the bravest of heart, the purest in thought, and the wisest in the ways of the Great Goddess. And while Hanne does not know if she measures up, she is the only one of the hens to have been born under the New Moon. And so she sets off on her quest.

It takes her far from the farm, to mysterious places she could never have imagined, from barrows to standing stones to the sea itself, and when at last she returns, "she was a different hen than she had been at the beginning of her extraordinary adventure." Unlikely as a hen may seem as an heroic figure, Hanne is a compelling seeker, and a wonderful introduction to the motifs of the quest. And Dunrea's lovely illustrations enrich the story in their dark depths.

which came first?

Hanna Johansen, Henrietta and the Golden Eggs. Illustrated by Kathi Bhend. Translated by John S. Barrett. Boston: David Godine, 2002.

"Once upon a time there were three thousand three hundred and thirty-three chickens who lived in a great, big chicken house on a chicken farm." Conditions are bad for the chickens, crowded together, losing feathers and getting coughs. Henrietta is just one of them. But as this fairy tale opening would suggest, she has ambitions. One day, she announces, when she is big, she will lay golden eggs.

That is not her only ambition. She also wants to sing. But singing is something she wants to practice privately, so she pecks and scratches at the chicken house until she has made a little hole just big enough to allow her to squeeze out. And she sees the world outside, all green and blue. Every day she squeezes out, and sings to herself. And on the day that she sings for the others, the hole has become big enough for all of them to squeeze out, and so they do. The farm workers spend the whole day rounding them up, and locking them in again before boarding up the hole Henrietta made.

But Henrietta is not done. She also wants to swim. So she pecks the hole open again, and again the others escape with her only to be rounded up and returned to the chicken house with the hole boarded up."Then they sat in their chicken house, in their chicken smell and pulled each other's feathers out and coughed."

Still, Henrietta wants to fly. And after the third escape, the farm workers persuade the farm manager to allow the chickens to remain in the pasture--so they all live happily ever after. And Henrietta lays her first egg. Is it golden?

This is not the only book to evoke the misery of chickens, who are indeed often depicted as endangered in one way or another, but it does so in a sprightly and optimistic fashion. Kathi Bhend's fabulous pictures make real the chaos of the chicken house and the peace of the pasture, as chickens break through the picture frames, and overrun the pages.

by the sea

Petra Mathers. Lottie's New Beach Towel. New York: Atheneum Books, 1998.

Lottie is a lovely Leghorn hen. Her story begins as she is preparing a picnic to share with a friend. A package arrives. "Inside was a beach towel with a note. 'Dear Lottie, This might come in handy this summer. Love, Aunt Mattie.'" And so it does. As events unfold, the beach towel rises to every occasion, saving Lottie's feet from the burning sands by the sea, servng as a makeshift sail when her friend's outboard motor dies, and substituting as a bridal veil when the original veil blows away in the wind.

This is a wonderful book for preschoolers, full of everyday dramas and the inventiveness needed to solve them. Lottie's unflappability is an inspiring model for them; her calm and persistence in the face of change an incredible support for them. Her reliance on a blanket-like object is endearingly familiar, as is her day full of incident from morning until night. And the peaceful image of her typing a thank-you note to her aunt while the towel dries under the stars is immensely comforting.

For years, we quoted lines from this book to each other, even the simple "What now?" when confronted with a small change in plans. You might, too.

over, under, around and through

Pat Hutchins. Rosie's Walk. New York: Macmillan, 1971.

"Rosie the hen went for a walk," begins this book, and so she does. But unbeknownst to her, the fox is following, hoping to catch her for himself. As she strolls through the cozy farmyard all unaware, the fox encounters an entirely different environment in his furtive pursuit of her--as Rosie walks around the pond, he, leaping towards her, jumps in; as Rosie steps over the rake handle, he jumps on to it, bringing it crashing into his face. Her obliviousness continues until her safe return to the hen house--and the fox's frantic flight from it. Hutchins' folk art inspired illustrations remove the story from the realm of the real, and allow it to assume an equally folkloric humor. Many little children delight in seeing what Rosie does not, and in seeing the fox frustrated at every turn.

Many do--but not all. If Rosie's Walk is too broad and menacing a tale for you, try Mem Fox's Hattie and the Fox. Hattie the hen's sharp eyes catch something in the bushes that she warns the others about, none of whom are impressed: " 'Good grief!' said the goose. 'Well, well!' said the pig. 'Who cares?' said the sheep. 'So what?' said the cow. 'What next?' said the horse." But Hattie's eyes do not deceive her, and when the fox leaps from the bushes, she alone is unruffled. Children know all too well the experience of calling attention to that which others ignore, and so it is an immensely satisfying story, with its steady repeated refrains.

Together, these two books speak to the child's experience of seeing and being seen, of knowing and not knowing, of the safety of ignorance and of the safety of knowledge.

Too little for either of these? Then don't forget nursery rhymes:

Hickety pickety, my black hen/She lays eggs for gentlemen/Gentlemen come every day/To see what my black hen doth lay.

Chook, chook, chook, chook/Good morning, Mrs. Hen/How many chickens have you got?/Madam, I have ten/Four of them are yellow/And four of them are brown/And two of them are speckled red/The nicest in the town.