With her native Pakistan as the setting, Khan (The Roses in My Carpets
) offers a comical parable about competing for a parent's affections. Rani thinks her mother Ami is playing favorites—with a hen, no less. "Somehow that silly chicken has wormed her way in," gripes Rani, as the featherbrained fowl follows Ami around their rural home. "When Ami's back was turned, I whispered, 'I'd like to cook you up and eat you!' " Then Rani's murderous wish is fulfilled: the hen gets eaten by a dog ("The gate had been shut. I was sure I shut it," Rani protests). But rather than proceeding to a conventional wrap-up, Khan continues in a refreshingly unsentimental vein: an egg left behind by the resented hen hatches, producing "the cutest, fluffiest little chick I'd ever seen," which Rani immediately adopts and dubs Buchi. "Ami says I love Buchi even more than I love her, but that's just silly," says Rani on the final page—a satisfying and face-saving acknowledgement that it is possible to have all sorts of attachments in one's life. Newcomer Kyong's naïf characterizations and flattened perspectives echo the directness of Khan's prose, and also balance the dark humor in Rani's unbridled envy. The sunny palette of vibrant greens, yellows and blues—reminiscent of Southeast Asian folk art—offers readers a sense of calm and reassurance, that they may weather whatever intense, scary feelings they may harbor. Ages 4-up. (Mar.)
