The Chicken Who Had a Toothache by Bénédicte Guettier (review)

A happy hen has a happy family of five children, three still in the shell and two out, one of whom happens to be a crocodile. When the chicken goes to the dentist, she brings the whole brood along. It turns out the chicken forgot something—she doesn’t have any teeth—but the kids get examined as well; the crocodile needs a bit of a lecture, since he hasn’t been eating right and it’s been bad for his teeth. The dentist suggests he should eat meat, such as chicken, but the little crocodile, furious at being told to eat his mother, instead chows down on the dentist. The text neatly blends the cozy and the absurd; while the dental details are a little heavy for the sprightly tone, the story otherwise operates in the impish spirit of early folktale parodies and sassy cartoons. The art employs big, broad, irregular black outlines around the figures and the spare settings, with high-contrast saturated hues filling the shapes in and the simple scenes generally floating against white backgrounds. The result is childlike vigor similar to Lucy Cousins’ work but with a little giggle, as the eggs trot around on their two legs and the newly hatched chick determinedly remains inside his broken shell (even popping a bobble hat on top of it). Pair this with Dyckman’s Wolfie the Bunny (BCCB 4/15) for a suite of funny stories about loyal cross-species adoptees.