Interrupting Chicken

For my birthday, my sister sent me one of this year's Caldecott Honor books - Interrupting Chicken by David Ezra Stein. 

I am not sure this is a book I would just pick up off of the shelf - simply because of personal preferences.   However, after reading this with my three-year-old son I really liked it and thought it was a very fun and creative book.

The story is about little red chicken and her papa and bedtime stories.  Papa reads bedtimes stories to little red but she keeps on interrupting the story with alternative, and less dangerous, endings.  Out of stories, little red must make up her own to get the bedtime story she, and her Papa, needs to fall asleep.

The story is funny and very reminiscent of reading stories to my own three-year-old where the story is interrupted with questions throughout.  The illustrations are very creative and are what make this story so fun and humorous.  When Papa is reading a story the two page spread will be the book (for example, Hansel and Gretel) with pictures of the story and the text - as though you are reading the book.  When little red interrupts it is depicted by her being placed inside of the drawn story with her interruptions in big bubbles over what the text of the story should be.

I really enjoyed this book and thought that they way it was put together was very imaginative and funny.   My son also loved it and especially enjoyed the ending.  This book reinforced the old adage for me of "Don't judge a book by it's cover."  I need to pull out more books to read where I am not initially drawn in by the style of the cover.