LITTLE CHICK'S BIG DAY
By
Two small motifs, each nice enough in its way, don't quite come together--and so don't add up to much of a story. Little Chick, resisting Broody Hen's call to take a nap, runs and hides in the garden (""'I am too big for naps,' she whispered to a string bean"") and in the barn (ditto, to the cow), then runs all the way to the pond. There, after some words to her shadow in the water, she wonders why she can't hear Broody Hen searching for her: ""Maybe I am lost."" But after no response is forthcoming (again) from ""the little chick in the water,"" she decides she's not lost, that she can and will find Broody Hen--and in a twinkling she does. The episode ends with some very Margaret Wise Brown-ish dialogue (""I saw you go to the pond,"" says Broody Hen. ""But I knew you would come home. You are my big Little Chick"") and with Little Chick settling down for a nap--but ""peeping"" out to say: ""Tomorrow. . . I will go to the pond again."" The nap strand is lost en route, the loneliness/lost-ness resolution is sheer authorial sleight-of-hand; none of this, furthermore is the least bit original--nor is it as appropriate for beginning readers as for the toddlers it's usually addressed to.