The Cock Moused the Little Red Hen: A Traditional Tale

After her friends refuse to help the little red hen with her housework, she uses an ingenious trick to save them all from a hungry fox

PreSchool-Grade 2-- A newly illustrated version of the folktale with a standard text, stylized colored-pencil drawings that emphasize form, and pleasingly varied page design. A double-page spread of the hungry fox leaping into the trio's house is especially effective. The lazy mouse is particularly well done and is visually the most expressive and comic of the characters. One jarring note, however, is that although the animals are dressed in country peasant garb and most domestic scenes are depicted with ``long-ago'' rustic trappings, the living room has contemporary furniture. Lorinda Bryan Cauley's version (Putnam, 1982) is less stylized; her interpretation emphasizes movement, texture, and patterns. Large folktale collections may want to consider both. --Linda Wicher, Highland Park Public Library, IL
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Softly shaded colored-pencil illustrations highlight this familiar tale of virtue rewarded, in which a resourceful red hen saves the day when a "bold bad fox and four bad little foxes" plot to hijack her and her housemates onto their dinner table. Their capture is the climax to a day gone wrong from the start, when the lazy mouse and quarrelsome cock got up on the wrong side of the bed. The little red hen cheerfully ignores their bad tempers and tends to the chores, but when their carelessness results in captivity, it's her quick thinking that helps them outfox the fox--and bestow on him a fitting end that youngsters will find highly satisfying. Percy's sprightly retelling bustles along as briskly as the red hen herself, and his cozy artistic style dovetails neatly with the tidy, pastoral world of fables. Ages 3-up.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

An unattributed expansion of the familiar nursery tale about a cock and mouse who mend their unhelpful ways after their housemate cleverly contrives their escape from a fox. Percy's smooth color-pencil style is as effective here as it was in his illustrations for Reynard the Fox (1991); the appealing animals are sly caricatures of their human counterparts, the realistic settings so lucidly rendered that they will be clear to the youngest listeners. The retelling is brisk and contemporary, but includes a decidedly odd addition: The ``four bad little foxes'' who live with the big fox not only volunteer to help with the cooking, but are actually seen at work making preparations for it--which sets them at least a couple of rungs above the cock and mouse on the moral ladder. What are we to make of that? It certainly undermines the story's original didactic intent. (Folklore/Picture book. 3-7) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.