by Moe Zilla

Created on: March 14, 2010

Jan Brett drew some wonderfully detailed illustrations for a folksy tale about the animals on a farm. Every morning the hen's egg is stolen "by a little Tomten" who doesn't want to eat porridge for breakfast. (There's a cute picture of the finicky Tomten, arms folded, next to a grey-haired mother raising her hands in exasperation as he rejects a blue-and-white china bowl, brimming with oatmeal and a spoon...) "Each morning the rooster crowed as the sun came up and Henny knew the Tomten was on his way.

"So did the little hedgehog who lived near by..."

It's the sweet little hedgehog from "Trouble With Trolls," with so much personality that he eventually got his own story. But first the story focuses on the hen, who changes her feelings about eggs when she sees Goosey-Goosey swimming with a trail of gosling behind her. The goslings came from hatched eggs, of course, and suddenly this makes Henny realize that she'd like "a brood of peeping chicks of her own." She tricks clucking and pecking at the egg-stealing Tomten, but this doesn't stop him from stealing her eggs.

The Tomten always calls out the same rhyme. ("Have you got a little yummy for my hungry, hungry, tummy?") Soon Henny is crying over the loss of her eggs - and plucky Hedgie is promising to help fix things with a sneaky trick. The next time the Tomten comes around, there is a yummy in the hen's nest that he can eat. But it's just a little acorn, and "it didn't fill him up..."

I like how Jan Brett fills her books with an almost omniscient series of drawings. Each page features a main illustration, but with smaller "sidebar" illustrations in the border around the page showing what the other charaters are up to. For this book, the framing illustrations appear in a cheerful red-and-white needlepoint pattern. And they show the Tomten waking up hungry - while the sneaky hedgehog is rolling an acorn up to Henny's nest.

And then a strawberry...

The pattern in the needepoint even takes the shape of whatever "substitute eggs" that are being rolled into the hen's nest. (First there's the shape of an acorn, and then a strawberry.) The next time it's a mushroom - and it's fun to see the hedgehog trying to roll it! Finally they try a potato, but the frustrated Tomten still isn't satisfied. He threatens to cook the hen if there isn't an egg waiting for his breakfast. And the pattern of the needlepoint shows the silhouette of a chicken in a cooking pot!

Hedgie does save the day at the end, though he remains mostly a helpful supporting character. The real appeal of these books are the wonderful illustrations by Jan Brett. The story feels a little formulaic - but the pictures are a wonderful visual treat!

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