Little Chick - Hardcover

Amy Hest, a three-time winner of the Christopher Award, is the author of Kiss Good Night and other stories about Sam and Mrs. Bear, as well as the Baby Duck series and many more award-winning books for children. She lives in New York City.

Anita Jeram, the illustrator of the award-winning Sam and Mrs. Bear books, is also the illustrator of the runaway classic Guess How Much I Love You and You’re All My Favorites, both by Sam McBratney. She lives in Northern Ireland.

Starred Review. PreSchool-Grade 2—The creator of Baby Duck presents three short adventures that brim with childlike concerns and solutions. Little Chick impatiently waits for her carrot to grow and then finally pulls it, finds a way to make her kite fly, and accepts that she cannot catch her favorite star and put it in her pocket. The protagonist, like many youngsters, wants what she wants immediately, but her understanding and wise Old-Auntie is always there to ease life's disappointments. The text is gentle, affectionate, and child-centered with some lovely turns of phrase and on-target dialogue. The stories become repetitive by the end, but that fact likely makes them more reassuring and appealing to the intended audience. Jeram's pencil-and-watercolor illustrations shine. Little Chick is so perfectly childlike—lying on her back holding her toes when she has to wait, leaning on Old-Auntie when things get too hard, or hanging her head dejectedly when her kite won't fly. Readers will empathize simply by looking at her. Old-Auntie is large and comforting yet distinctively birdlike, and the pages are nicely varied, mixing spot sequences with single- and double-page paintings. From the green-checked endpapers to the blue-washed star-filled sky on the final spread, Little Chick is a joy to behold and will find a treasured place in most collections.—Amy Lilien-Harper, The Ferguson Library, Stamford, CT
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.