The Little Red Hen

Publishers Weekly

This photo-illustrated retelling of "The Little Red Hen" stays faithful to the traditional plot, but pictures its lazy barnyard characters playing pool and other human games, in a Wegman-like treatment. "One day the Little Red Hen found some grains of wheat. `Look, look!' she clucked. `Who will help me plant this wheat?' " A black-spotted duck, a potbellied pig sporting a baseball cap and a sloe-eyed white cat catch some rays in the yard; each responds, "Not I." On harvest day, the duck, pig and cat busily play cards; as the bespectacled hen grinds the wheat and rolls the dough, they watch a pig movie ("Hairy Trotter") and play checkers with bottle caps. After the animals gamble the days away, the hen refuses to share her home cooking. South African illustrator Downard, making his debut, works in photo collage. He manipulates close-ups of an actual hen, duck, pig and cat, adding human apparel and awkwardly bending wings to resemble arms; the ambitious hen dons rubber boots and totes a shovel as she goes to plant the grain. While the story's question-and-answer format is well known, the layout fails to serve it well. The animals are pictured when the hen asks them her questions ("Who will help me make this flour into dough?"), but their "Not I" responses appear without them; a reader has to turn back to a previous spread to see who's doing the talking. Other editions of this favorite nursery story better serve the tale of the unappreciated baker. All ages. (Mar.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Children's Literature

Yes, there can be a fresh, fun-filled way to tell the old story of the hen that had to do it all by herself. Each time she asks for help, she gets the same response: "Not I," from the duck, the pig, and the cat. And of course, when the warm, fresh bread is out of the oven and ready, she eats it all by herself. Great color illustrations of the barnyard animals are "the result of a lot of time spent taking photographs, snaffling them up in a photo-snaffling machine, and then sticking it all together with computer glue. No animals were hurt in the making of these images; in fact they all had a real good time." They create rib-tickling scenes in which they are taking a sun bath with sunglasses on, sitting around playing cards, shooting pool, playing checkers, or watching TV. Our Little Red Hen, in the meantime, is striding off in rubber boots, watering can and shovel at the ready, or riding her bicycle, or preparing the dough. The angles used to compose the scenes add considerably to the fun of this new angle on an old tale. 2004, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, Ages 3 to 7.
—Ken Marantz and Sylvia Marantz

School Library Journal

PreS-Gr 1-Downard presents a new rendition of the classic story in which the lazy duck, pig, and cat refuse to help the resourceful hen. This version elaborates a bit on how the bread is a "delicious golden brown color" and in the end the hen eats it all by herself, not with her chicks as in some retellings. However, what really sets this book apart is its modern and witty artwork. The collage photographs are generated with the assistance of a computer with delightful results. In one scene, the three animals are playing pool; another shows the little red hen riding a bicycle and wearing a helmet, glasses, and red rain boots; and in another illustration, the cat has headphones. The creative pictures are fun to pore over and will catch the interest of kids slightly older than the traditional audience for this tale.-Linda M. Kenton, San Rafael Public Library, CA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Computerized photomontages render the traditional text of this favorite classic in an offbeat, anthropomorphized scat style. Little Red Hen is portrayed with boots (green in one scene, red in another), hat, and lavender-blue eyeglasses as the duck, pig, and cat, in a variety of guises, decline to help, because they're wearing headphones and sunglasses, playing cards and pool, watching "Hairy Trotter" on TV, and playing checkers with bottle caps. Though the artistic method is interesting, the background images are dark and murky and at times the overlay effect muddles and whiffles the composition. The adult cleverness doesn't translate into child appeal nor is it a surrogate for the inveterate Galdone version or Philemon Sturges's zany Little Red Hen Makes a Pizza (1999). Only half-baked. (Picture book/folktale. 3-6)