Hungry Hen - Hardcover

Waring, Richard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0066238803 ISBN 13: 9780066238807

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2001

Synopsis

There once was a very hungry little hen, and she ate and ate, and grew and grew, and the more she ate, the more she grew.

Up on the hill lives a cunning fox. He watches the hen every day and thinks, "If I wait just one more day, the hen will be even bigger."

Then one day he can't wait any longer...

About this title

About the Authors

Hungry Hen is Richard Waring's first book. He lives in England.

Caroline Jayne Church's picture books have been published in eight languages. Her illustrations can be found in advertising, paper products, packaging, character creation, and card design. She lives in Farnham, Surrey, England.

Reviews

K-Gr 2-A parable about greed. A steadily growing hen that is mightily fond of her feed is watched over by an increasingly hungry fox. "If I wait just one more day, the hen will be even bigger," he muses. His greedy eyes take in the chicken's increasing size and weight as he gets leaner and hungrier. However, this is no ordinary hen. Waring masterfully builds suspense with only a few well-chosen lines of text per page. Church's pen-and-ink and watercolor artwork on specially created papers features simple outlines and achieves maximum expression with minimal pen strokes. Close-ups of the hen as she eats and continues to expand emphasize her ballooning size and the contrast to the scrawny, expectant fox. A sudden change in font size combined with an abrupt halt to the pictures prepares readers for the surprising climax followed by the hen with the hint of a satisfied smile on her face. Chalk one up for the underdog; this hen has just expanded her daily diet.

Mary Elam, Forman Elementary School, Plano, TX

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Waring's droll debut picture book introduces a hungry little hen who "ate and ate, and grew and grew, and the more she ate, the more she grew." Day after day, an equally ravenous fox sits on a hill above the henhouse, surmising that the longer he waits to sneak down the hill (presumably to devour the hen), the bigger she will be. British artist Church plays with perspective to accentuate the hen's gradual enlargement and the fox's increasingly emaciated state as its ribs grow more prominent. When the seemingly sly creature finally makes his move, predator becomes prey as the now enormous hen gobbles up the now scrawny fox in a sudden, kid-pleasing about-face. With its relatively large type size, limited vocabulary and copious repetition, this straightforward narrative is just right for those beginning to read on their own, (e.g., "And so he waited and waited and waited, and the hen grew bigger and bigger, and the fox grew hungrier and hungrier, and thinner and thinner"). Church's spare artwork matches the text in its simplicity, with her bold palette and thick black line shown off against inventively textured backgrounds created on hand-made paper. A refreshingly understated caper. Ages 3-6.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Ages 2-4. The story is simple and dramatic, with a perfect blend of words and pictures. A very hungry little hen "ate and ate and grew and grew and the more she ate, the more she grew." A hungry fox watches her from the opposite page, waiting for her to grow fatter every day. Meanwhile, he's getting hungrier and thinner. Finally, he can't wait anymore. He races down the hill, through the farm, and into her house--and she gobbles him up. This is elemental storytelling, with tension rising until it's almost unbearable, and then the great surprise. The art is beautiful, with big, bright, clear shapes of the rosy hen and the sneaky fox on backgrounds of handmade paper that evoke the bits and pieces of a farmyard floor. The very young audience won't get the ironic reversals of the fox-hen storytelling tradition, but they'll enjoy turning the pages as excitement builds to the standoff that transforms the prey into the winner. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0066238803
• ISBN 13: 9780066238807
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Church Caroline Jayne
• Number of pages: 32