For Sure! For Sure!

Britta Santowski is a freelance writer in Victoria.

This Hans Christian Andersen tale about gossip has a simple message:
stories grow.

It begins with a chicken who loses a few feathers while grooming and
comments on how gorgeous she looks. Young readers then follow her
comment from her fellow chickens to the owls to the pigeons to the bats
and back to the chickens. At each stage, it grows just a little bit
more. By the time it gets back to the chicken coop, it has evolved into
a story about three chickens that pluck themselves bare, fight a bloody
battle, and die for the love of a rooster.

Unfortunately, the story, at times, is difficult to follow. For
instance, when Mama Owl hears the story she says, “Just don’t
listen! Of course, you did hear what was said, didn’t you? I heard it
myself with my own two ears, and you have to hear a lot before your ears
fall off.” Don’t listen. You heard it. I heard it. I heard a lot.
Your ears fall off. Huh?

Visually, the pages are thick with odd colour combinations (red and
yellow, red and purple, green and purple, black and purple) that are too
intense, with too little white space to give the eye a rest. Finally,
the text is jarring (the print is sometimes black, sometimes white,
sometimes BIG, sometimes small), and there’s the sense that something
has been lost in translation. Not a first-choice purchase.