Yearly Archives: 2012

Children’s Books Featuring Chickens

Chickens are innately comical and some of the best children’s book authors and illustrators have tapped into that to create wonderfully fun books. Here are my favorites. Please contact me if you have a suggestion to add to this list! Of course, I have to start this list with my very own book.

Tillie Lays an Egg
by Terry Golson, photos by Ben Fink
2009

Farm
by Elisha Cooper
2010
What I love about this book is that it is set on a real Midwest farm, with tractors, dust and chores. It resembles, in the best of ways, the Provensen’s books about Maple Hill Farm in Vermont. Most books about farm animals are anthropomorphized to the point where the animals are unrecognizable as animals, and the farms have little in common with real farms. This book is charming, and yet doesn’t idealize the farmer’s life. I’d like to see Farm in every kindergarten library!

Chickerella
by Mary Jane and Herm Auch
2005
Really, any of the books by this team could be on this list. The Auchs do crazy, silly, over-the-top punny chicken fun. Some books are illustrated, some are a combination of photographed dressed up models and art. Most have chicken themes. Totally unrealistic but sure to produce giggles.

The Red Hen
by Rebecca Emberly and Ed Emberly
2010
I’m a sucker for most versions of The Little Red Hen, and this one, by the talented Ed Emberly and his daughter is a riot of color and fun.

The Chicken of the Family
by Mary Amato, illustrated by Delphine Durand
2008
When Henrietta’s sisters tease her and tell her that she is a chicken, she believes them and goes up the street to join the flock in Farmer Barney’s coop. It turns out that hens are much nicer than older sisters! Amato uses just the right amount of words to describe both sibling relationships and the affinity of kids for chickens. The illustrations are charming (though I wish that Durand didn’t give chickens smiling, toothy mouths under their beaks!)

Chicken Cheeks
by Michael Ian Black
illustrated by Kevin Hawkes
2009 
All kids like to talk about animal bottoms, and this book has a gazillion names for them, from “cheeks” to “tush” to “heinie.” The cover has an especially nice view of the backside of a chicken. Just for that, the book gets a shout-out mention here.

Chicky Chicky Chook Chook
by Cathy MacLennan
2007
This is the sort of book that you want to read again and again to the very young who are beginning to enjoy sounds and language. “Splitter, splatter. Wet. Wet. Wetter.” There are darling yellow chicks and hens with striped and polka-dotted combs. They’re not anatomically correct – but they’ve got that silly chicken look.

Minerva Louise
by Janet Morgan Stoeke
1988
Minerva Louise reminds me of my late beloved hen Snowball — she’s inquisitive, cheerfully innocent and totally silly. Janet Morgan Stoeke has written 11 delightful picture books about this hen. Perfect for children, but also welcome in any household that loves chickens. Start with this first one and work your way through the oeuvre (pun intended!)

Daisy Comes Home
by Jan Brett
2002
Jan Brett is an author/illustrator of beautiful children’s books. She also raises Polish and is involved in a Bantam Club. Daisy Comes Home is about a chicken in China who gets lost and eventually finds her way back home.

The Problem With Chickens
by Bruce McMillan
illustrated by Gunnella
2005
This is a very funny and silly book about chickens in a village in Iceland. There are charming illustrations of large women in aprons having tea with chickens and exercising with chickens, and, you’ll have to read the story to believe it, shimmying on ropes down a cliff to collect chicken eggs. Delightful.

How the Ladies Stopped the Wind
by Bruce McMillan
illustrated by Gunella
2007
This is the second book by McMillan and Gunella about the ladies of Iceland and their chickens. The chickens are crucial to the plot as “It was the chickens’ job to make fertilizer for the trees. They did their job very well.” Obviously, the author knows chickens!

Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?
(Many illustrator-authors)
Dial Books for Young Readers
2006
Fourteen talented children’s book illustrators come up with answers to this age-old question. Very funny.

The Painter Who Loved Chickens
by Olivier Dunrea
This book is about, well, exactly what the title says. It is absolutely charming. The picture of the Silkie is worth the price of the book.

Chickens to the Rescue
by John Himmelman
2006
Exuberant and madcap fun.

Also worth finding are:

Big Chickens, Big Chickens Fly the Coop and Big Chickens Go to Town by Leslie Helakoski, illustrated by Henry Cole
Hattie and the Fox by Mem Fox
Rosie’s Walk by Pat Hutchins
My Life as a Chicken by Ellen Kelley
Chicken Boy, by Frances O’Roark Dowell, is a middle school novel about a seventh grader in a dysfunctional home. Chickens play a large part in teaching him about life and helping him cope. It’s well-written, touching, difficult yet hopeful.

A Good Day

The plants are having a good day. The drenching rains have revived them. The dogwood is blooming.

Scooter is having a good day in the sun (and see, more plants are blooming and having a good day in the little pond.)

The goats are having a good day. We moved their electric fence and so now they can reach new grass and brambles in the meadow. That makes Pip smile. Of course, Pip always has a good day, although perhaps some are even better good days than others.

Candy is having an especially good day. This morning she had a hop-around in the goats’ paddock. This afternoon she has claimed the prime spot in the pen – the dirt wallow. It’s sunny and dry, which are perfect dust-bathing conditions for the chickens. But, Candy rules. There she is.

This is a bunny having a very, very good day.

Teacher’s Page

Are you a teacher who is teaching your students about chickens and eggs? Need some ideas? You’ve come to the right place! Start your program by reading my book, Tillie Lays an Egg (Scholastic, 2009). Then, make use of my live-streaming barn cams on your computer and smart boards.

Concepts learned while reading

  1. Days of the week.
  2. Counting—for the littlest ones, simply count the eggs or the chickens. Older children can count every chicken image they see on the page.
  3. Chickens lay only one egg a day
  4. Chickens are omnivores — they eat corn and worms (and lots of vegetables!)

Activities to do after reading

  1. Watch the animals on the HenCam! http://HenCam.com (Please be aware that “Tillie” is the stage name for my bantam White Leghorns.)
  2. Have each child draw a picture of a chicken. There are many breeds of chickens. Some examples are in Tillie Lays an Egg. Go to the Who’s Who page on HenCam. http://HenCam.com/whos-who/the-animals/ My flock contains several breeds of hens. Note that different breeds not only have a variety of feather colors, but also legs can be white, yellow, black, red or brown. Combs can be big, little, or not there at all. Let the children get creative!
  3. Give names to your flock — one of the fun things about having chickens is coming up with names. Some people name their hens after famous women, like Eleanor Roosevelt and Betsy Ross. Others name them after favorite book characters, or spices, or breakfast cereals. Have fun!
  4. Write/draw/discuss the next Tillie adventure. Will she go to a fair? Your school? What silly place will she lay her egg?
  5. Create a Venn diagram that compares Tillie and the other hens.
  6. Have a book nook with chicken books. See my FAQ of favorite chicken books for children: http://HenCam.com/faq/childrens-books-featuring-chickens/
  7. Hatch your own chicks. This is a good resource: http://lancaster.unl.edu/4h/embryology/
  8. Spend time learning about feathers via The Cornell Lab’s excellent site, All About Feathers. http://biology.allaboutbirds.org/all-about-feathers/

Ways to use HenCam in the classroom

  1. Watch the animals on the HenCam. http://www.HenCam.com/
  2. Turn HenCam into a science station. Have children write down observations about what the animals are doing. How often do they eat, sleep, and rest? What else do they do?
  3. Do the animals behave differently when the weather changes? What happens when it is wet? Cold? Dark? Sunny?
  4. Preschoolers can learn to keep a chart. Keep a list of the different hens. Each time a child sees a hen on the screen, they can mark the chart, or mark it each time a hen is seen eating, or in a nesting box.
  5. Classrooms that do a hatching program usually give the chicks away before they feather out and become adults. The HenCam is a way to introduce mature chickens to the students.

Fun craft projects and other things

  1. Make a chicken mask. Glue on feathers.
  2. Make a yellow chicken crown. Glue on cutouts of eggs, chicks. Add feathers.
  3. Do the chicken dance. Here is the dance on The Lawrence Welk Show http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UV3kRV46Zs
  4. Make a chicken “purse” from a plate. http://www.freepreschoolcrafts.com/easter-chick-purse-from-paper-plate/
  5. Use a plastic cup to make a chicken clucker. http://www.sciencebob.com/experiments/chicken_cup.php

I welcome your ideas! Please email me at terry@terrygolson.com

At The Conference

I spent yesterday at the NESCBWI conference. SCBWI is an acronym for Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. If you’ve an aspiring writer, or if you’ve made it and want a community of your peers, then this is the organization to belong to.

Two years ago I went to the conference, but I had so so little hearing left that, even when sitting in the front row, I missed 70% of what the speakers were saying. I didn’t think I’d ever return. But, now, with my CIs, I decided to see whether a conference was a possibility for me. I sat in the front, which is still necessary, but this time I heard 90% of the proceedings. It was the most extraordinary, miraculous experience to be in an audience and to hear what others were hearing. I still miss the quick quips, and if there’s lots of laughter or clapping I can’t hear the words masked by the background noise. But that’s a small quibble. I literally couldn’t believe my ears. I’m sure the talks were excellent. I’ll leave others to blog about them. I paid attention at the time. But now, looking back, all I remember is that I heard. I even went out to dinner and was able to take part in a conversation with three companions in a noisy restaurant. Amazing.

(For those new to my blog, start here. I’m a cyborg. I have two cochlear implants. Without these medical devices, I’m deaf.)

I was so overwhelmed that when Cynthia Lord (yes, that Cynthia Lord, the Newbery Award winner) stopped by my table at the lunch banquet, to ask me how my “girls” are, that I didn’t at first recognize her. It’s hard to hear and see at the same time. I’m still learning to integrate all of the senses. (By the way, Cynthia is a HenCam fan. I like thinking that my hens are flickering on computer screens around the world, calming and inspiring writers.)

When I sat down at the large round banquet table I noticed that the woman next to me had “chicken” printed on her name tag. Wow, I thought, other people are into chickens here, too. Why don’t I have chicken on my name tag? And then I realized that “chicken” was her entree choice. I do live in my own poultry-centric world, don’t I?

It was a two hour drive home. I have a CD of the Beatle’s number 1 hits that I purchased a few years ago. I know the music well-enough that even with a severe hearing loss I could hum along. I haven’t listened to it since getting my second CI. I popped it into the slot. It sounded pretty good. And then, I was so stunned by what I was hearing that I almost had to pull over. Recently I had my CI reprogrammed to give me more high notes. I haven’t heard these sounds since I was a child. Or, maybe never. One of the Beatles was playing a tambourine.

It jingles! It jangles! It rings! I had no idea.

I have a long road trip coming up in May to western New York State. I’m going to get a whole slew of CDs from the library – music I think that I’m familiar with. I wonder what I’ll hear. I wonder what I’ve been missing. I’ll try to keep driving while I’m listening, because I don’t want to be late for my talk at the Farmer’s Museum. I hope to meet some of you there. I can’t wait to hear and see you.

The Rooster Puppets’ New Home

I used random.org to select the winner of the rooster puppets giveaway. It was sheer luck, but the roos couldn’t be going to a better home. Here is the entry from Shelley:

Having a summer day camp for kids with disabilities. They will be riding, grooming and other stable chores, feeding/caring for chickens, collecting eggs so they can participate in the weekly farmer’s market, crafts and working on social skills. Spruce Point Farm Camp in LaGrange, KY

Bet they would sell alot of eggs using the puppets!

Shelley, I want to see a photo of the roosters and kids at the farmer’s market!