Chicken BIG (not to be confused with Chicken Little!)

Chicken Big by Keith Graves is a hysterical twist on the familiar tale of Chicken Little.  I read Chicken Big to first graders, and many of them were familiar with the original story.  They recalled how Chicken Little thought the sky was falling after being hit in the head with an acorn, and how his paranoia spread to the friends he met along his way to tell the king.  And who could forget how the tale ends, with Foxy Loxy tricking Chicken Little and his friends until they become his meal.

Chicken Big is a silly story about an enormous chick who hatches from a humongous egg. The rooster and three small chickens that live in the itty-bitty coop don't know what to make of Chicken Big, and think he must be an elephant.  When an acorn falls on the smallest chicken's head, she thinks the sky is falling.  The other chickens run away, but the big chick informs them it's only an acorn, and proceeds to eat it.  After seeing the chick eat the acorn, they think the chick must instead be a squirrel.  And so on.

The text presented a good opportunity to talk about all the different ways there are to say "big" and "small."  I also pointed out that there were many interjections ("Yahoo!") in the story, and Mrs. Grogan and Mrs. Kent would be pleased to know that the students remembered that an interjection is a word that shows emotion.  Singing the Schoolhouse Rock song "Interjections!" at the end of the year concert last June really drilled the term into their memories!

I love reading stories that have similarities and differences to another story the students know, and they usually do a fine job making these text-to-text connections.