MEWBURN, Kyle (text) Ali Teo & John O’Reilly (illus.) Chick’s Sick! Scholastic, 2013 unpaged NZ$19.50 pbk ISBN 9781775431220 SCIS 1615913
The terse verse here speaks of Chick who is thick as a plank. What comes first, the chicken or the eggs? When Chick settles down in a nest, ‘she’ is horrified that there are no eggs. All the animals come to help in a variety of comical ways. There is one animal that tries to help. the snake! The calm of the night is shattered when, with forked tongue, snake slithers to the nest, Chick squawks, jumps on the snake and crows with delight! Whoops, Chick is a rooster! He never has to worry ‘again about eggs getting stuck’! Cock-a-doodle-doo!
Well, I might not want to dramatize this sexual awakening thingy in the Early ChildhoodE centre, but children will delight in the humour of stupid animals as ‘Other’. Meanwhile, an exploration of gender names and animals might result! JMcK
