Little Chick - Softcover

Amy Hest was born in New York City and raised on Long Island. She worked as a children's librarian and then in the children's book publishing industry for many years. Today, Amy is an author of more than thirty books for young readers. Two of her books, When Jessie Came Across the Sea, illustrated by P.J. Lynch, and Kiss Good Night, Sam, were awarded the Christopher Medal. Anita Jeram is the illustrator of the multi-million selling picture book phenomenon Guess How Much I Love You. She is married to a palaeontologist and has three children and a menagerie of animals. She lives in Northern Ireland, and hopes, eventually, to set up a wildlife sanctuary there.

Starred Review. PreSchool-Grade 2—The creator of Baby Duck presents three short adventures that brim with childlike concerns and solutions. Little Chick impatiently waits for her carrot to grow and then finally pulls it, finds a way to make her kite fly, and accepts that she cannot catch her favorite star and put it in her pocket. The protagonist, like many youngsters, wants what she wants immediately, but her understanding and wise Old-Auntie is always there to ease life's disappointments. The text is gentle, affectionate, and child-centered with some lovely turns of phrase and on-target dialogue. The stories become repetitive by the end, but that fact likely makes them more reassuring and appealing to the intended audience. Jeram's pencil-and-watercolor illustrations shine. Little Chick is so perfectly childlike—lying on her back holding her toes when she has to wait, leaning on Old-Auntie when things get too hard, or hanging her head dejectedly when her kite won't fly. Readers will empathize simply by looking at her. Old-Auntie is large and comforting yet distinctively birdlike, and the pages are nicely varied, mixing spot sequences with single- and double-page paintings. From the green-checked endpapers to the blue-washed star-filled sky on the final spread, Little Chick is a joy to behold and will find a treasured place in most collections.—Amy Lilien-Harper, The Ferguson Library, Stamford, CT
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