Henrietta and the Golden Eggs

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Summary: Review of Henrietta and the Golden Eggs
Review: As a parent, I enjoy this succinct yet sensitive story about a chicken who turns the tables on a very serious situation; that is the healthfulness of her environment, which she shares with the many, many other chickens in her barn. My children, ages 4 and 7 found her antics hilarious. They begged for the story to be read again and again, which I was pleased to do. I would highly reccommend this book to other parents on the lookout for environmental books for their children, or for children who enjoy a good animal story.

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Summary: Lost in translation
Review: Dang it! I hate it when this happens. Have you ever picked up a book that you really really wanted to like and found, instead, that you couldn't stomach it? Or worse, that it had some really wonderful elements but you had difficulty separating them from the book's problems? Well welcome to my reaction to "Henrietta and the Golden Eggs". Winner of the 2003 Mildred Batchelder Honor for the best translation of a foreign children's book, I had placed high hopes on this puppy. And while there were great things about this creation, something got seriously lost in translation. Though it's inoffensive enough, the book just doesn't make a lot of sense.

In this story we meet Henrietta. As one of the three thousand three hundred and thirty-three chickens kept in a seriously unsanitary chicken house, Henrietta is not yet fully grown. She hasn't started to lay eggs yet, but she knows that when she does they'll be golden. The other chickens ridicule little Henrietta, but when she successfully pecks a hole in the wall of the chicken house, all three thousand three hundred and thirty-three are quick to join her in the wild outdoors. After several such escapes (and recaptures by the farm employees) a solution is reached. The chicken house is extended to allow the birds to travel both in and out of doors. And when Henrietta finally lays her egg, it's just a plain brown one. The end.

I've actually summarized this plot as well as I could, but I've taken the liberty of giving the book a little more semblence of order than it actually contains. It's perfectly possible that in the original German, this book made sense. In the English version, however, there are just some elements that don't. For example, Henrietta is constantly telling the older chickens that someday she'll prove them all wrong and be able to sing/fly/swim/lay golden eggs/etc. She never does a single one of these things and when the chickens point out at the end that she laid a brown rather than a gold egg saying, "You didn't even need to bother trying", her reply is, "Did you really believe that a chicken could lay golden eggs?". Huh? The whole book is like this. I didn't understand the moral and I didn't understand exactly what it was the author was getting at.

Now for all the flaws of the narrative, the illustrations by Kathi Bhend almost make the book worth purchasing alone. Drawn in the most delicate of pen and inks, Bhend has given her chickens irony, sophistication, and wry good humor. Everything that the text lacks. When Henrietta first scratches a hole in the chicken coop wall we see a delightful shot of a frog climbing sturdy blades of grass. The pictures in the book are so detailed that you can make out every single tiny feather on the chickens as they cluck and strut. I was especially fond of the picture of Henrietta's egg. While everything else is all blacks and whites, the egg sits there glowing a soft brown color. For pure pleasure alone I just flipped through this book without reading a word and I had a marvelous time. I highly suggest you do the same.

Maybe someday this book will be translated differently. Maybe when it is it'll make sense and people will come to enjoy it. Until that happy day arrives, however, this book is simple to describe. Plot so-so. Pictures good.