Thursday’s Tale: The Little Red Hen

The Little Red Hen by Golden Books Staff
Illustrator: J. P. Miller
Series: Little Golden Book
Published by Golden Books on August 18, 2012 (first published 1954)
Source: Purchased
Genres: Folktale, Picture Book
Pages: 24
Format: eBook
Purchase at Bookshop.org
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Beloved illustrator J. P. Miller’s graphic, colorful farm animals seem to jump right off the page—but they aren’t jumping to help the Little Red Hen plant her wheat! Young children will learn a valuable lesson about teamwork from this funny, favorite folktale.

Amber’s 17 now, so I don’t really have much need to look at little kids books except for Christmas and my nieces’ and nephews’ birthdays, and then I always buy physical books. I just learned today that a bunch of the Little Golden Books I remember as a kid are available for Kindle, with the same illustrations and everything.

In the tale, the little red hen finds a grain of wheat and asks for help from the the duck, the goose, the cat, and the pig to plant it, but they all decline. They each are doing something fun, as the pictures show.

At each later stage (reaping, carrying the wheat to the mill, making the flour into dough, and baking the loaf), the hen again asks for help from the other animals, but each time no one wants to help her.

Finally, the bread is ready and the hen asks who will help her eat the bread. This time, everyone volunteers, but she says she will eat it all herself.

I think the blurb is a little misleading. I’m not sure the lesson is about teamwork, but more about not participating in the team. If you don’t help, you don’t get the reward.

And I have to share a couple of the pictures, since it is the illustrations that make this version so memorable for me.

Thursday’s Tales is a weekly event here at Carol’s Notebook. Fairy tales, folktales, tall tales, even re-tellings, I love them all. Feel free to join in.