A CHICK CALLED SATURDAY

There’s one in every clutch—a nonconformist who’s simply not content to toe the line. Saturday, the seventh of orderly Mother Hen’s otherwise tractable chicks, wants to know when he will swim and bob like the ducks, hiss and honk like the bug-eyed geese, or sing and fly as the blackbird does. Unsatisfactory explanations leave Saturday to learn the hard way that all the wanting in the world won’t turn a chick into a gosling. Although it will hardly pass muster as science—hens do not lay multicolored eggs (perhaps Mother Hen is a brooder?), and cockerels are not born with combs—this gentle life lesson of pursuing one’s potential without wishing for what cannot be is well-organized, offering readers the chance to predict Saturday’s dilemmas and to chime in on several of Mother Hen’s refrains. Loose watercolor-and-pencil pictures and a touch of appropriately “scratchy” calligraphy put readers in the right farm—uh, frame—of mind to sympathize with Saturday and to applaud when he finally cock-a-doodle-doos. (Picture book. 2-5)