Book #19 - The Cow that Laid an Egg

  "I don't feel special, said Marjorie."

Title: The Cow that Laid An Egg

Author: Andy Cutbill

Illustrator: Russell Ayto

Publisher: HarperCollins

Date of Publication: 2006

Genre: Fiction

Readability Lexile: Not Found

Summary:
Marjorie is a cow who lives on the farm with lots of other farm animals. One day, while talking with the chickens she decides that she  doesn’t feel special because she can’t ride bikes or do handstands like the other cows. She feels so ordinary.  The chicken develop a plan to make her feel better. One night the place a chicken egg under Marjorie while she is sleeping. The next morning  Marjorie wakes up and to her surprise finds an egg. I’VE LAID AN EGG, she yells. Everyone , including the farmer and his wife get super excited about Marjorie’s new skill.  The other cows however don’t believe that she actually laid the egg. She waits and waits until the egg hatches to prove to them that she did lay the egg. When  it finally hatches  the little chick has quite a surprise for everyone.

Evaluation:
This is such an cute story! Though this story wouldn’t actually happen in real life , the theme very worthwhile for students. The feeling that Marjorie has in the beginning this story is one that many people have from time to time; a feeling of being unspecial or too ordinary.  Also, the action of the chickens is similar to something that a good friend would do for another friend. The characters  fit well with the story and the language fits well with the characters. The setting of this story is the farm in which Marjorie lives.  The setting seems authentic for the plot and the types of characters. The author doesn’t use any offensive, degrading, or stereotypical language or illustrations.

Literary Elements:
1. Theme: The theme of this story is that everyone is important and special but that sometimes it takes a friend, or a bunch of chickens, to remind us or help us to realize it. I think most people go through a time when they feel like Marjorie did but with friends by your side they can make you feel much better.
2. Multi-Modal Text: The book uses many non-typical kinds of text. The look of the text is used to show the emotion of the words being read and they also help to extend the meaning of the story. When Marjorie finds the egg under and she says “I’ve laid an egg!”, the words almost take up the entire page because she is so surprised and excited.
3. Onomatopoeia: Since this book is all about farm animals, there are many words that represent the sounds that the animals make such as moo and cluck and also the sounds of the egg cracking – tap, tap, tap and crack.

Illustrations:
The illustrations are really fun and use many different mediums. They are a little over the top and silly but they make the story fun and engaging for students. The illustrator uses photographs, paint, pencil, and many other elements to create these outstanding illustrations.

Mini-Lesson Idea:
I would use this story to teach the use of multi-modal texts in writing to enhance and extending the emotion and meanings of the text. I would pair students up and give them a copy of this book or other books that have looks of examples of multi-modality in the writing and have the students read the book in the way that they think it should be read based on the look of the text. Then after the teacher has also modeled expressive reading the students could start to write their own stories that use multi-modal text.