The Little Rooster and the Diamond Button

Brenda Baltensperger is a playwright, a director of children’s
theatre, an editor of children’s fiction, and the author of Fractured
Fairy-tales.

Little Rooster lives with a very poor old woman. When there is nothing
to eat, he is forced to eat worms and bugs; but he won’t eat those
from his own yard, because they are his friends. As he searches for food
one day, Little Rooster spies a diamond button. Before he can pick it up
and take it to the old woman, a rich, greedy sultan sees it and sends
one of his servants to pick it up. Ignoring Little Rooster’s protests,
the sultan takes the diamond button back to his palace and adds it to
his other treasures.

Mortified but determined to regain what is rightfully his, Little
Rooster follows the sultan. His repeated demands that the sultan return
the button are meet with repeated attempts by the sultan to kill him. In
the end, the defeated sultan releases Little Rooster and tells him to
take whatever he wants from the treasury. Little Rooster returns to the
old woman with a lot more than one diamond button.

This retold tale teaches the reader that persistence usually pays off
if one is in the right. The ornate illustrations are appropriate for
this Arabian Nights type of story. Recommended.