‘The only chick with black and white
markings, Petunia stood out, and often found herself the subject of other
chick’s ridicule, and worse.’
Petunia is a hen who prefers spending her time
in her own little garden full of beautiful, colourful flowers, rather than the
confines of the chicken coop or the company of the other hens.
‘The hen yard felt small and oppressive,
but amidst the confinement and crowded quarters, Petunia had carved out her own
little piece of joy. Her garden lay tucked into a forgotten corner at the far
end of the fence.’
Bernadette, with ‘piercing, bulging eyes’,
is the hen who tries to rule the roost and dominate the other chicks, whilst
Francine is the head of the brood. However, the Orpas are the ones to really be
afraid of... Sadly, Petunia has several encounters with these unfriendly hens
as she is different in her ways from them, and therefore distrusted.
Petunia offers companionship to the lady who
lives in the house, learning new things all the time, and she derives much
happiness from the time she spends with Silkie, as she has named the lady. She
is alone amongst the hens in enjoying spending time with a human; the others
viewed humans ‘with the utmost suspicion and contempt.’
Macy is the resident cat, with whom Petunia has some interesting and surprising
encounters as an unusual kind of friendship forms.
The story encompasses themes of loneliness and
being different, of cruel bullying and finding unexpected
friendship. Through the behaviour of the hens towards Petunia, who finds
herself at the bottom of the pecking order, the author demonstrates how cliques
can gang up on individuals and cause fear through their intimidation of them.
The illustrations are excellent; really
gorgeous pictures at the start of each chapter which relate to that part of the
story immediately to come.
I was impressed by the quality of the writing
and the language used. This is a strong story and the characters really came to
life as I read. The garden is vividly evoked and Petunia’s little world is
richly imagined. I felt glad for her as she ventured out into the unknown and
discovered new things; she represents the bravery of the individual to break
away from the crowd and please themselves, despite strong pressure to conform.
There is some violence towards Petunia which makes this unsuitable for very
young children I think, but the situations within the story could certainly be
removed from the chicken coop and placed in a school playground context and
discussed if one were dealing with bullying and being different. As this is
billed as part 1, and the ending is rather open, I would be interested to find
out what happens next.
There's a website here where you can find out more about the book and the couple who have created it, as well as view the illustrations.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thank you so much for taking the time to visit and leave a comment. It's great reading your comments and I really appreciate them :)