Interrupting Chicken

All Ages

Birth - 12 months

by David Ezra Stein

A favorite joke inspires this charming tale, in which a little chicken's habit of interrupting bedtime stories is gleefully turned on its head. It's time for the little red chicken's bedtime story --and a reminder from Papa to try not to interrupt. But the chicken can't help herself! Whether the tale is Hansel and Gretel or Little Red Riding Hood or even Chicken Little, she jumps into the story to save its hapless characters from doing some dangerous or silly thing. Now it's the little red chicken's turn to tell a story, but will her yawning papa make it to the end without his own kind of interrupting?

Age: 4 Year-olds | Title: Interrupting Chicken | Author: David Ezra Stein | Publisher: Candlewick Press

Why we chose this book

The little red chicken is so familiar with all the stories her Papa has to read to her that she can’t help interrupting and warning the characters not to make their typical mistakes. She saves Hansel and Gretel from the old witch, Little Red Riding Hood from the wolf, and Chicken Little from his own unnecessary worry. Finally, the chicken's Papa announces there are no more bedtime stories to try and read. When little red chicken insists she cannot fall asleep without a story, and she is surely done interrupting, Papa turns the tables and asks little red chicken to tell him a story instead. Little red chicken is excited to do so, but she is surprised when Papa soon provides an interruption of his own.

The painted illustrations almost look like crayons with many colors mixed loosely to create the illusion of solid colors. The mesh of colors provides plenty for children to look at and study while they are listening to the story. Whenever Papa begins a new bedtime story for little red chicken, it is displayed as a large open book across both pages, so readers are seeing and experiencing the same story and book that little red chicken is. It is obvious that little red chicken knows each story all too well. Does your child know the stories also? What do they have to say about little red chicken’s warnings to the characters?

My niece Emily was excited when I brought this book over because she had never read it before. I specifically wanted to read it to her because she likes to interrupt her own bedtime stories as a stalling technique. She doesn’t warn the characters of impending trouble, like little red chicken does, but she will make corrections if she doesn’t think the story is unfolding as it should, or she will ask questions she already knows the answers to just to stall. After reading this story together, I asked Emily if little red chicken reminded her of anyone. She thought for a minute, then answered, “I guess the chicken’s Papa kinda reminds me of you.”

--Audra