Beautiful Yetta: The Yiddish Chicken (2010) - Plot & Excerpts
I liked the hard ink lines mixed with the softer watercolors. Not to mention the story (a chicken escaping from being butchered who meets and joins a flock of wild parrots in New York City. The icing on top is that all of the dialogue is in English and Yiddish (for the chicken and farmer) or Spanish (for the parrots). And it includes what I felt was pretty good a phonetic pronunciation guide for every sentence directly below the English and Yiddish/Spanish text. The illustrations were bright, fun, and appealing, but somewhat mundane feeling in that they were nice, but not excellent. What really shines about the book is the incorporation of Yiddish and Spanish dialog into the book, which would be a good cultural experience as a read aloud by a teacher happy to practice the phonetic pronunciations ahead of time. Otherwise, the story seems oddly stilted, perhaps attempting for a humour that it did not achieve, and rather unexciting in the way that the plot is arranged. It seems to including a random plug for organic and free range chicken farming. However, on an academic level, it would be a really interesting subject for an analysis of attitudes toward the county and city. As it is apparently based upon real events, I would have appreciated an author's note or news clipping or something with more information.
What do You think about Beautiful Yetta: The Yiddish Chicken (2010)?
lovely and unusual story from the Pinkwaters. Who knew chicken's spoke Yiddish?
—dpeck200
Yetta is too beautiful and too clever to end up as Sunday dinner.
—hayles351
