The Chicken Problem

PreS-Gr 1–In this story billed as an introduction to “basic math concepts,”  Peg and Cat  love to “solve problems” and eat pie. Visiting a farm to share their favorite dessert with a resident pig, the child notes four pieces of pie for only three picnickers, so Cat invites a chicken to join them. Problem solved–until Peg realizes that he has inadvertently released 99 other chickens from their coop. Managing to capture only 10 chickens, she has a new problem to solve with the remaining chickens “dashing… splashing… skipping…” all over the farm. When her efforts to corral the fowl don’t work, Cat points his tail toward a handy pile of wheelbarrows. “In a flash, the chickens dashed into the wheely things! (Chickens really love going for a ride)” and they are successfully wheeled off to their cages. Now, Peg and friends can sit down and enjoy their pie. Brightly colored, cartoon illustrations appeal in their humorous detail; alternating backgrounds of white space or simulated graph paper and various fonts for narrative, speech, and simple addition equations add visual kick. However, the touted math concepts are weak and barely discernible amid the drawn-out, rather arbitrary plot. Stick with more straightforward choices such as Emily Jenkins’s Small Medium Large (Star Bright, 2011), Bill Martin, Jr., and Michael Samson’s Chicka Chicka 1,2,3 (S & S, 2004), and Donald Crews’s Ten Black Dots (Greenwillow, 1986).–Kathleen Finn, St. Francis Xavier School, Winooski, VT