Ever since reading and reviewing “Ashes of Roses” by Mary Jane Auch, I’ve been on the lookout for more of her work. I was very pleasantly surprised to happen upon this children’s picture book.
“Chickerella” is the story of Cinderella, but I’m sure you’ve guessed there’s a twist. Yep, our heroine is a chicken. Her mother was carried away by a fox, and her father remarried, bringing stepsisters Ovumelda and Cholestera into the family. The stepmother’s smile gave Chickerella hen bumps.
It wasn’t long before she sent Chickerella’s father off on a wild goose chase and turned Chickerella into a slave girl in her own coop. Every night, Chickerella was locked in the springhouse and wasn’t allowed to sleep in the coop any more.
As Chickerella fed herself from bugs that lived on the springhouse walls and drank from the spring itself, she discovered that she was laying eggs of clear glass. They were beautiful and so unlike the eggs from the other chicks.
The invitation arrived for all chicks to go to the Fowl Ball. Chickerella wanted to go too, but she wasn’t interested in getting married to the prince; she just wanted to see the gowns.
After seeing her stepsisters off to the ball, she is visited by her Fairy Goosemother, a quirky gal with a Brooklyn accent. Poof, and she’s off to the ball, to find that the prince isn’t interested in getting married either. He’s there to see the gowns as well, and together he, the Fairy Goosemother, and Chickerella start up their own fashion design team.
This book has no hidden moral. It’s simply created to be entertaining, and entertained I was, perhaps most of all by the pictures. Mary Jane made chicken puppets from clay and feathers and posed them in various different ways, and her husband did the photography, putting it together on the computer. The end result is hysterical.
(This book was published in 2005 by Holiday House.)
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