TITLE: A Little Chicken
By Tammi Sauer, illustrated by Dan Taylor (Sterling Children's Books), 32 pages.
STORY: Picture books in which a girl masters self-doubt to save the day are a dime a dozen. This one costs $26.95.
Dot, a chicken, wears round spectacles, meaning she's brainy. The American Poultry Association doesn't recog
nize any breed like this fully fledged girl-pullet with a red comb, heel spurs, overalls and prehensile wings, but definitely she's a little chicken: She's afraid of garden gnomes.
While hammering a security camera onto the coop, she knocks an unhatched sibling into a series of improbable cliffhangers. She fails and fails to save the egg but, of course, she doesn't give up and so, finally, she saves the egg.
The story unrolls as a series of cliffhangers as the surprisingly athletic Dot bounds through colorful landscapes with attractively multi-toned foliage. The prose is designed to be read aloud, and kudos to Sauer for egg-shewing stupid puns.
Read to Me is a weekly review of short books.
Style on 04/01/2019