Published: August 1, 2000

Recommended For Kids

HENNY-PENNY , retold and illustrated by Jane Wattenberg. (Scholastic, $15.95; K- 2.) Over the years, picture-book illustrators and wordsmiths have had great fun recycling this and other tales, fables, and nursery rhymes from the kiddy-lit canon. These stories never seem to get old—perhaps because they never get told or illustrated the same way twice. And the retellings and the accompanying artwork are getting zanier and zanier.

Among those taking the genre to hilarious heights in recent years are Anne Miranda and Janet Stevens with their 1997 gem To Market, To Market; Kathryn Lasky and David Catrow with The Emperor's Old Clothes from last year; and Stevens and her sister Susan Stevens Crummel with the scrumptious Cook-A-Doodle-Doo!, a takeoff on the Little Red Hen story, also from last year. With this, her first picture book, graphic artist Wattenberg joins esteemed company.

The story is a familiar one, first popularized a century ago by the English folklorist Joseph Jacobs. When an acorn falls from a tree and beans barnyard chicken Henny-Penny— in some versions of the story, it's Chicken Little, in others Chicken Licken— she fears the sky is falling and races off to tell the king. Along the way, she meets a number of other gullible birds—Cocky-Locky, Ducky-Lucky, Goosey-Loosey, and Turkey-Lurkey—who join the mission. Their journey ends abruptly, however, when the group throws caution to the wind and follows Foxy-Loxy, who has promised a shortcut. Naturally, the fox leads the birds not to the king but to his den,...