Out Of The Egg / Cong Dan Li Chu Lai De

Out of the Egg is a retelling of the story of the Little Red Hen, with a twist at the end that deviates from the usual interpretation of the story. While the story is simply told, I suspect younger children would need scaffolded discussion around it in order to understand the key themes. Because of this, the story could be used for classroom discussion across a range of ages, depending on how deep you want to go. There are cross-curricular links with social studies (social responsibility, the way our societies are structured and operate) and art (woodblock prints).

Tina Matthews has illustrated her book with woodblock prints that complement the text nicely. I like how she has kept them predominantly black and white, then used red (for the hen and her chick) and green (for the seed and the plant that grows from it) to focus the reader’s attention to key parts of the story.

The State Library of New South Wales has produced 4 activities to help with teaching this book. Three are based around visual techniques used to tell the story, the fourth is writing a sequel.

Note that I do not speak Chinese, so am unable to comment on that version of the story. That being said, I am hugely in favour of any book that makes reading more accessible to the students and families that visit my school library – let’s normalise the publishing of bilingual books! ‘Out of the Egg’ is published in other bilingual editions that will be relevant to schools in Aotearoa including, English/Māori, English/Niuean and English/Tongan.

This would work well read aloud, I would suggest reading it in conjunction with ‘The Little Red Hen’.