When readers last saw David Ezra Stein’s irrepressible little red chicken, she was lobbying a drowsy Papa to rustle up a sweet Saturday morning repast in 2021’s Interrupting Chicken: Cookies for Breakfast, the third story starring this punny feathered family. Now, 15 years after the debut of Interrupting Chicken, a 2011 Caldecott Honor book, Stein and Chicken are back—with a free-ranging holiday tale, an anniversary box set, an Emmy nomination for the animated series, and four new book projects in the incubator.
First up is Interrupting Chicken Saves the Nutcracker, in which Chicken and Papa fly their home coop and attend a performance of the beloved Christmas season ballet. The picture book goes on sale September 9, and we have an exclusive first look at the cover.
“This was a big departure,” Stein said. “The first three books are Chicken and Papa reading books together at home, and this was blowing things up, in a way, so that Chicken could go out into the world.” For Stein, this meant figuring out what such a foray might look like. “I got to do lots of worldbuilding and development,” he said. “I wasn’t sure how to pull it off at first, but it kind of fell into place with her being in a society of other domestic animals.” Once Papa and Chicken leave their Brooklyn-inspired brownstone, Stein said, “They take the subway—with turkeys and horses and other animals—to the ballet, and Chicken gets to interrupt the real Nutcracker.”
Though this may be Chicken’s first official time out on the town, exploring her broader environs was something Stein envisioned from the beginning. “Back when she was just an idea, my early sketches of her were her as a police officer, a Girl Scout, all the different costumes that she could wear and roles that she could play,” he recalled. “But then the first story came into its own and it just became the relationship between her and Papa. The heart of all the books, really, is: he loves her, and she drives him crazy.”
That familiar and funny dynamic is on full display in Nutcracker. “The idea of her interrupting ballerinas and making them fall over was just too good to pass up,” Stein said with a laugh. And she’s only getting started, he noted. “There’s so much potential for these guys,” he said. “I have many, many ideas in my sketchbooks that are clamoring to be made into books.” To that end, Stein has signed a four-book deal with Candlewick to deliver two more Chicken picture books and two additional stories about her in an early reader format, beginning in fall 2026.
But there’s plenty for fans to celebrate before those books are hatched. On March 15, the animated television show Interrupting Chicken, streaming on Apple TV +, is vying for an Emmy in the 2025 Outstanding Preschool Animated Series category (it also received a nomination for the 2024 award). Stein serves as executive producer for the program, which features the voices of Sterling K. Brown as Papa and Juliet Donenfeld as the little red chicken (named Piper in the TV adaptation). “It’s a very tender show,” Stein said. “I love how its tone is so nurturing and gentle. The books are a little more subversive, but I think both can exist and be their own thing.”
Stein noted that he has a say in all aspects of the production, and he’s pleased with the show’s overarching message. “I’m really proud that it teaches kids about writing, because it’s empowering for them to understand how stories are told and how to take control of narratives and tell their own stories.”
Special birthday wishes for Papa, Chicken, and Stein are in order this year, too. Close on the heels of Nutcracker’s fall release, Candlewick will mark the Chicken series’s 15th anniversary by rolling out Interrupting Chicken: Three Books for Bedtime on September 30, a paperback box set of Chicken’s first three adventures featuring some additional cover imagery and two press-out characters that kids can play—er, interrupt—with.
Stein, for one, is ready to shake a tailfeather for these characters. “The chickens are very personal to me in terms of my experience of having books read to me when I was growing up, and also the experience of being a parent,” he said. “I feel very blessed to be part of people’s lives through these books. It’s an honor to be part of someone’s bedtime routine.”
