Author: Sally Huss
Publisher: Huss Publishing (no website found)
Rating: WORTHY!
I was rather late with my valentine children's novel review this year, so I decided to whisk this one out more quickly to beat the Easter deadline....
Some might argue that this children's story has rather cannibalistic overtones to it, with it featuring a chicken collecting eggs for the Easter egg hunt. Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire! It ignores the fact that those eggs are in fact potential baby chickens! However, if the eggs aren't fertilized, they're going nowhere, so let's pretend that's the case. I'm not so hard-boiled, so it certainly made my conscience feel better. Not to crow about it, but I also feel that we don't have to bear this yoke, since there was no rooster in sight.
Obviously this was a women's collective. Collective? Get it? Never mind...and Henrietta, who is clearly in the catbird seat here, is rushing around like, like, well, like a headless chicken, trying to gather enough eggs for the children's Easter egg hunt, and she has a problem. Suddenly her quota has been doubled, the egg-timer is running, and she's at a loss for how to get all her eggs into one basket! If I had an egg for every time that's happened to me, I'd have to shell out to buy more.
Henrietta is merciless, approaching every chicken until she can see the whites of their eggs, demanding ever more, and hoping none of her co-workers are feathering their own nest with the profits, but she's still not feeling sunny-side up. What's to be done? Fortunately her brain isn't fried, and she remembers that birds of a feather flock together. She scrambles to approach the swans and the ducks, who prove they aren't bird-brains and provide a good eggs ample.
This is all well and good, but if Henrietta doesn't want to end up with egg on her face, she has to get these eggs painted - all one hundred of them. Fortunately, rather than sit around rabbiting on about her problems, she takes action, and approaches the local lagomorph cooperative. They happily agree to paint the eggs for her. Furrah!
To keep things purring along, the help of the local felines is sought, to avoid a cat-astrophe. As I'm sure you've gathered, by egging-on everybody, Henrietta managed to get her ninety nine eggs...wait a minute, who provided the hundredth egg? Hum, that would be a spoiler, but the clue is in the minute! I loved this story. The bunnies were particularly bunn-a-licious and Henrietta, the best chicken in a century, is a sterling example of how to avoid fowling-out. It's good to know that the chickens are not afraid to cross that road when they come to it!
