Review - Chicken Big

Chicken Big
by Keith Graves
Date: 2010
Publisher: Chronicle Books LLC
Reading level: C
Book type: picture book
Pages: 40
Format: e-book
Source: library

On a teeny little farm, in an itty-bitty coop, a very small hen laid a big, giant egg. And out of this egg came one big, humongous . . . something. "It's big!" clucked the little rooster. "It's enormous!" clucked the small chicken. "It's an elephant!" peeped the smallest chicken. "Run for your lives!" they cried. No matter how they try, these clueless chickens can't make sense of the gigantic new member of their family until he saves the day. With wacky, laugh-out-loud humor and silliness to spare, this BIG twist on the classic Chicken Little story lends a whole new perspective to what it means to be chicken.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

This retelling of "Chicken Little" takes the classic story and gives it a small twist. Here, we get a hysterical chicken who jumps to conclusions about their large friend (thinking he's an elephant, a squirrel, and an umbrella, among other things). Each time, the big chick proves her and the other chickens wrong, and eventually saves them all from a common enemy.

The illustrations are cute and kids will probably like the story. But the e-book edition I read was terrible. Some of the illustrations include text that was part of the story, so it was really important to get the actual text in the right place. This edition didn't do that, which led to a bit of confusion. There were also some lapses in punctuation, which I'm guessing are also an artifact from the conversion process. The book is probably fine in a physical format (so I'm not going to take any points off for that), but it's something to be aware of if you're looking at getting this as an e-book.

Quotable moment:

Premise: 4/5
Meter: n/a
Writing: 3/5
Illustrations: 3/5
Originality: 3/5

Enjoyment: 4/5

Overall: 3.5 out of 5