Lulu the Big Little Chick
by Paulette Bogan

Release Date: 6th Jul 2009
Publisher: Bloomsbury
ISBN: 978 1 4088 0202 1
RRP: £5.99

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A little chick who wants to act big...

Lulu is a little chick who lives with her mother on a farm, but Lulu is tired of being treated like a baby and decides one day that she is going to go off into the world by herself to prove that she is a big chick. First, Lulu gets splattered with mud by one of the piglets. When her mother asks her if she needs help getting cleaned up, Lulu is defiant and declares that she is not far enough away. The further Lulu gets, the bigger and scarier the creatures become. Finally, as the light starts to fade, Lulu hears a terrifying sound and can feel the air move as something seems to be swooping down towards her...

Bright and colourful, Lulu the Big Little Chick is the age-old story of a young child trying to assert themselves. An important aspect of growing up, Bogan captures perfectly the naivety and overconfidence of a child in its insistence of being big enough to cope on its own. It must be a sign of the times that the story appears intent on emphasising the fear factor of being small and alone; it used to be that being a child meant having freedom without responsibility. This, I felt, was saddening. But what I found most odd, was the fact that at no point did Lulu express a desire to be back with her mother, nor did she attempt to return to the safety of her home – so in direct contradiction to the blurb on the back cover, Lulu was not “clever enough to know when to ask for mummy”, which I personally feel would have been a more appropriate ending than that of the mother swooping in from nowhere, clutching at her distraught child.

The illustrations are darling and the story is simply told, but I feel that perhaps Bogan missed a trick and instead of portraying a healthy attitude towards exploring the world as well as an appreciation of the safety offered by a parent and a home, she allows something sinister to permeate the story. For that reason, this won’t make it to my child’s bookshelf.

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