Her response is hysterical, but also totally believable to any parent who’s ever read their child a fairy tale where ominous things are on the horizon and found themselves hit by a barrage of questions and concerns about the welfare of the main characters. “…out jumped a little red chicken, and she said, “DON’T GO IN! SHE’S A WITCH!” So Hansel and Gretel didn’t.
Right as Hansel and Gretel are about to follow the witch into her house, the little chicken JUMPS into the storybook page, screaming: She swears up and down that she’ll behave, so Papa starts reading Hansel and Gretel – this is where Stein switches to the inserted storybook pages. As Papa Chicken tries to put his little red chicken to bed, she innocently asks for a bedtime story, and Papa quickly makes it clear that his daughter has a long reputation for interrupting while he reads. Interrupting Chicken has a funny premise, but it’s his execution of said premise that makes this a stand-out book.
The sheer design of the book is really impressive.īut I think Stein really excels when it comes to storytelling. Interrupting Chicken has a fantastic visual style that brings together various different mediums – the main spreads with the chicken and her father are watercolor paintings with a great palette of reds, greens, and browns there are sepia-toned storybook pages interspersed throughout the story and we even get the chicken’s own attempt at making her own picture book that’s illustrated in crayons. This is the first David Ezra Stein title that our family has read, and he’s a major talent, both as a writer and as an illustrator. So, full disclosure, Interrupting Chicken is a book about bedtime that we only read during daylight hours at the moment, but it is still one of our favorite semi-recent additions to our home library. However, when it’s already past 8:00 pm and it’s a school night, it gets to be a bit much. Which, don’t get me wrong, is HILARIOUS to witness. She loves it SO much and she’s created such a weird, funny little ritual surrounding the book that, while we read it, she becomes such an active participant that she freaks out a little bit. I find I can’t read Interrupting Chicken to my daughter at bedtime anymore because it has the opposite effect of a good bedtime book – it actually wakes her up.
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