Cock-a-Doodle Doo

This is one of those like super old books (1939) that just tells this meandering story with incredibly detailed pictures, alternating between black and white and full color. It just goes on and on.

So there's a farm by a pond. On the farm, there's a bunch of ducks. A chicken egg gets among the ducks and hatches at the same time. The farmer even recognizes this and goes, "Oh well, he will get along all right with the ducks." He just doesn't care. Clearly he doesn't know that the ducks and chicks and other animals are apparently mildly sentient in this universe.

Chickens can't swim. This poor chick is just miserable. He hears a rooster crowing from a farm on the other side of the hill, so he wants to go to the farm. He can't get there by flying so he wanders through a meadow and a forest. Various predators try to eat him and he gets away, warning their prey away as well by cheeping. Somehow he manages not to get caught, and finally makes it to the farm on the other side of the hill where there's a bunch of random animals like turkeys and geese and other chickens. A hawk comes and he runs into the chicken house successfully and goes, "Yeah, I'm gonna be happy here. Because there's chickens." And he gets food that's actually intended for chickens. And then he turns into a big red rooster.

Whoop-dee-doo. It's just an extended biography of a chicken with exactly one incident in his life of any interest at all. Really, the farmer that owned him should have thought, "I bet this egg came from that farm on top of the hill," because seriously, ducks don't lay chicken eggs. Doesn't happen. Instead, he's just oblivious to the origin of the chicken egg. If he bought it, how was he (or the seller) unable to tell the difference between duck eggs and chicken eggs? After the chick was born, he should have said, "I don't do chickens. Maybe I should give it to my neighbor in the farm on top of the hill who has chickens. I know, because I can hear them crowing all the freaking time."

Basically, the farmer/owner was a lazy jerk and the chick suffered for it. But then he turned into a rooster and I guess everything's okay again. The story just meanders. It doesn't go anywhere. It's not terribly interesting. At least there's some conflict in there for a slight bit of interest, but there's no point to it.