“Hattie was a big black hen. One morning she looked up and said, ‘Goodness gracious me! I can see a nose in the bushes!’ . . .”

At a reading conference in Hong Kong in 1984, I attended a workshop in which rhyming, rhythmic books were read aloud interactively for over an hour. It was brilliant. The point was to show how easy it is for kids to learn to read with bouncy repetitive books. I was thinking in bouncy rhymes all day. and wrote the first draft of Hattie that night. Of all the books I’ve written this is the one which has been quoted to me most by teachers as having made the difference to a non-reader ie. they have learned to read, finally and with easy pleasure, using this book. It is based of course on the traditional hen-and-fox tales which go back to Chaucer, Aesop and the dawn of time, I imagine. It has strong a basis in the structure of the story of The Little Red Hen and also leans on Pat Hutchins’ famous book: Rosie’s Walk. I regard Hattie as one of my classics. I love reading it aloud with lots of verve and noise in a sing song, very rhythmic, chanting style.