The Little Red Hen (Phyllis Fogelman Books)

"Oh joy of joys!" That’s the last line of The Little Red Hen, and it is also the perfect expression of how the book makes readers feel. The beloved story of the hardworking hen and her lazy neighbors, with its Golden Rule message and its sassy finale, is just as relevant and satisfying as ever. And who better to enliven it than the masterful Jerry Pinkney, who, through his warm, winsome, and slyly funny depiction, has created a definitive interpretation of the tale. Cheerful and classically beautiful, this is the ideal edition for every child’s library.

Customer Reviews:

give this to your teenager!

By WDH - March 8, 2007

Everyone said this is a childs book. I believe its a teenager book. Teenagers think they should get everything and do nothing. After an incident with one of my teenagers I got this book and the understanding of how life works in the book made sense to my teenager.

A Cheerful Moral Lesson About Work and Laziness

By Shanna A. Gonzalez "eyelevelbooks.com" - September 22, 2010

The Little Red Hen is a tale beloved by generations of children for its pleasing repetition, its humor, and its unsubtle moral at the end. A red hen finds some wheat kernels and, in the face of her friends' refusal to assist, successfully plants it, harvests its crop, takes the wheat to the miller to be ground, and bakes it into bread. Then, when all her lazy friends invite themselves to partake, she eats it herself, thus illustrating (perhaps not very graciously) the lesson of 2 Thessalonians 3:10 that those who do not work should not partake of the benefits of others' work.

Jerry Pinkney has interpreted this old story with extravagant watercolors, fully of careful detail and narrated with cheerful and humorous text. There is even a delightful self-portrait of the artist as the miller, with his paints and sketches tucked away in the corner as he turns from the mill to hand the little red hen her flour. This story is sure to be enjoyed by a preschool and elementary... read more