I Got a Chicken for My Birthday

But this chicken is no ordinary chicken; it has plans! With a lot of hard work, and help from lots of other animals, this chicken may just end up building the girl the best birthday gift ever!

“"What's wrong with Abuela Lola? Our birthday girl asked her three times for amusement-park tickets, and you know what? Abuela sent her a take-charge chicken styling yellow construction boots instead! If that isn't bad enough, the tool-belt-wearing denizen of the barnyard has subverted all the pig-tailed Latina's pets. Not a one has time for cake, no one wants to play, and everyone is ignoring the aggrieved narrator. To make matters worse, the chicken (via imperative-clause picket signs) demands that Abuela travel posthaste to the child's backyard. Dogs wearing hard hats, birds hoisting girders, grandmas operating bulldozers--has the world gone mad? Gehl's sparsely worded wink to Anne Isabella Ritchie's evolving axiom, 'Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for life,' is made into a masterpiece by Horne's distinctive and humorously sly illustrations. The raucous colors pop against the wry, understated refrain, "I got a chicken for my birthday." Practically every clever detail begs to be the center of attention. Is the chicken's scrolled supply list with the sneakily embedded song lyrics the pice de rsistance, or is it the hamster powering the monstrous Ferris wheel? Visual puns compete with subtle tweaks to the funny bone, and each deserves to be savored in its own right. Either Horne was in Gehl's pocket or vice versa, because this utterly seamless blend of story and art is an ingenious treat for all ages."--starred, Kirkus Reviews”

"[T]his utterly seamless blend of story and art is an ingenious treat for all ages."—starred, Kirkus Reviews

Laura Gehl is the award-winning author of more than three dozen picture books, board books, and early readers including Who Is a Scientist?, I Got a Chicken for My Birthday, Dibs!, and Climate Warriors: Fourteen Scientists and Fourteen Ways to Save our Planet. A former science teacher with a PhD in neuroscience, Laura lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland, with her husband and four children. Sarah Horne grew up in snowy Derbyshire, UK, with some goats and a brother. She then decided to be sensible and studied illustration at Falmouth College of Arts and earned a Masters degree at Kingston University. Sarah has written and/or illustrated numerous books for children and has also worked on commissions for The Guardian, The Sunday Times, Kew Gardens, Sesame Street, and for IKEA as their Children's Illustrator In Residence. She now draws, paints, writes, and giggles from underneath a pile of paper at her studio in London.

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