It’s the third outing for the cockamamie Loopy Coop hens.
Midge, Pip and Dot, three terminally gullible and mildly delusional hens, are taking in the shade under an apple tree. An apple falls, startling them. What could that be about, they wonder? Very likely, they decide, it is a fox up in the tree throwing apples down at them. When more apples continue to rain down, Dot, who is feeling intrepid this day, decides to climb the ladder and see what’s up. What she finds is that apples fall of their own accord and that the view is sublime. The pure transcendence infects the hens. “I feel like I am an apple,” says Pip. “I feel like letting go,” says Dot. And Stoeke lets them do just that. They drop like rocks—or apples, it is true—their chicken wings as useful as bicycles in the sky. They sprawl in the shade of the tree once more, now knocked dizzy from their crash landing, but giddy: “That was fun!” “I love being an apple!” “Let’s do it again!” Here is an unconventional and gratifying take on “letting go.” The story, in all its brevity, subverts any moralizing. If there is any didacticism present, it is that letting go needn’t only be a taxing rite of passage; it can be sheer, even mystical joy.
Midge, Pip, Dot—the Marx Sisters. (Picture book. 3-5)
