Blue Chicken

Blue Chicken by Deborah Freedman
2011

     Open the book to its title page and you'll find a table with paints, brushes, water, and an incomplete drawing of a barn and a chicken coop.  Turn to the dedication page and you'll see one of the chickens in the coop coming alive and climbing out of the page.  The chicken wants to help finish painting the barn.  She climbs on the blue paint bottle and tips it over, painting herself blue. "And the spilled blue is spreading. Till the ground grows blue, too!" Pandemonium follows as the animals and the landscape are now all blue. The chicken tries to fix her mistake with water...and all this happens as we can see past the drawing table, out the window, into a real barn being painted by the illustrator.
     Blue Chicken is wonderful.  The text is deceptively simple but the meta-illustrations and play with perspective, add a whole other level to the book.  The illustrations are gorgeous and the story line is captivating enough to make you go back again and again.  Fabulous!