Caldecott Medal Contender: Preaching to the Chickens

by Sam Juliano

Chickens are far more intelligent and cognitively sophisticated than previously believed. Recent studies have resulted in findings that assert they are able to recognize faces and remember voices, even in the case of people who have long been absent.  Furthermore, this cognitive process involved in representational thinking in chickens is similar to those required for associate learning in humans. When one considers that about ninety-nine per cent of all animals killed for food in the United States comes from the combined chicken and turkey fraternities, one is left with a profound sadness that includes even those who partake in the consumption.  Children’s literature has always held the chicken in high intellectual regard, and favorites like Chicken Little, The Little Red Hen and Click Clack Moo show them as enterprising and purposeful.  The British animated film Chicken Run, features a band of chickens who pin their hopes on a smooth-talking Rhode Island Red to help avert their death at the hands of their farm owners, who are looking to convert from selling eggs to chicken pot pies.

In a soulful picture book Preaching to the Chickens the acclaimed writer Jabari Asim has disseminated these human qualities on a flock of barnyard fowl in adherence to a real-life ritual from the childhood of a famed civil rights activist.  Indeed, Asim admits in an afterward that he was always a fervent admirer of John Lewis whose “brave participation as an original member of the Freedom Riders – Americans who in 1961 rode buses into the Deep South to protest the segregation of black and white travelers who were forced to sit on separate benches and drink from separate fountains – bellied the struggle to achieve equality for all.  Asim further relates that he was proud to meet Lewis shortly after reading his powerfully vivid memoir Walking with the Wind, a personal account of the harrowing events that led to long overdue social freedoms.  But it was the passages in the memoir that documented Lewis’ childhood in Pike County, Alabama that moved the author to create his own work, one primarily aimed at an impressionable audience.  Lewis dreamed of becoming a preacher and of moving audiences with powerful sermons.  He found just the captive audience he was looking for in a riveted congregation of chickens “who would sit very quietly moving their heads back and forth” fully attuned to the voice delivering the daily oratories.

Asim opens Preaching to the Chickens during the invigorating Spring season which he dubs “the season of the chicks” because of the great difficulty in bringing them into the world in the seasons marked by hot and cold.  Cooking from scratch, cleaning clothes with homemade soap in a boiling pot, and hanging them on a line gave John’s mother all the work she could handle and then some.  In the meantime young John was thrilled to take charge of the chickens -Asim descriptively notes their species and colors – getting up early every day to feed them and registering their clucks as a measure of appreciation.  Even when John tells them that the new day is a gift from God, the chickens seems to comprehend.  It is asserted that John loves Church most of all, and for the family it provides one day to sport their spiffy apparel after a week of toiling in work garments. Booming church hymns like “Amazing Grace” for John were as profound and reassuring as this dawn of day rousting of his beloved chickens.  Modeling his own barnyard histrionics after the House of the Lord’s minister, John, who unlike his brothers and sisters knew every bird in the flock, applied a line of verse for each, and intervenes on the feeding chaos by evoking Matthew 5:9, Blessed are the peacemakers, continuing with Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied to a chicken unwilling to share.  John’s devotion to his birds overrules a trade proposal from a man willing to barter bright-colored cloth, cooking oil, flour and sugar for one healthy hen.

Asim incorporates a few other real-life episodes in his narrative when relating the rescue of hen named Big Belle from a well.  This time the cluck was taken as an “Amen” when John preaches to her about the miracles God brings to everyday life, and this includes a subsequent incident when John successfully resuscitates  a chick named Li’l Pullet thought drowned after one of his baptism sessions.  After John declares that the Lord can heal the sick and “raise the dead” after Li’l Pullet is restored the chick’s peeps are counted as validation.  The author concludes that John is soon referred to as a preacher by his kin.  And while his destiny was to speak before thousands of people, his earliest demonstration of this spiritual avocation manifested itself in the audience that may well have been the dearest to his heart.  Not even scientific findings could match the all knowing intimacy way back then in a blessed hamlet in Pike County.

The author’s celebrated illustrator is the renowned E. B. Lewis, who is no relation to the subject, but without question the best pictorial purveyor of this slice-of-life impressionistic story by way of his incomparable mastery of the gouache-watercolor form.  Lewis has illustrated over seventy books, winning a Caldecott Honor for Coming On Home Soon by Jacqueline Woodson and also collaborating with her on two extraordinary works, The Other Side and Each Kindness.  His spare and resonant art for Angela Johnson’s All Different Now is wholly sublime.  His illustrations for Asim, like the ones for the other books mentioned here bring out a nostalgic warmth for their southern settings, and as always demonstrate an incomparable watercolor proficiency of measuring light and using it to define the emotional state of mind in all his tapestries.  Bleeding browns project the feeding chaos in and outside the hen house shanty; a dearth of illustrative boundaries in canvas where John’s father plows the field echos the long and seemingly endless work days; compromised foliage greens in the spread of Mama turning the clothes pot are tinged with regret; the scene of John holding a hen while the others gather around is the embodiment of barnyard camaraderie, with deep reds and browns accentuating the warmth; Sunday bliss reigns supreme with the ornate dress and hats and white shirts allowing for a rare showing of pride and the group approaches the church and then inside praising the lord; the miracles involving Li’l and Big Belle are strikingly emphasized with saturation and density of color, but Lewis’ portraits of the feedings and the exalted sessions when he speaks to his flock are simultaneously exhilarating and reverent – a stark depiction of a figure imbued by the heavens to spread God’s word – Lewis brings a metaphysical aspect to these scenes, and the last brings a Sermon at the Mount to this small southern backwoods town.  There isn’t a single tapestry in  Preaching to the Chickens that isn’t frame worthy and the dust jacket cover, a replication of the one inside is one of the most stunningly beautiful of any book released in 2016.  The solid midnight green end papers too are appropriately sedate, not daring to intrude on this ecclesiastical epiphany that united a preacher with his disciples in an unlikely scenario that was ordained from above.

Preaching to the Chickens, one of the most distinguished picture books of the year highlights an altogether fascinating and sanctified childhood, one that both chronicles the remarkable ritual that led to the way to the prominence of a towering American orator, but also makes persuasive case that faith and understanding isn’t exclusive to the human domain.

Note:  This is the sixteenth entry in the ongoing 2016 Caldecott Medal Contender series.  The series does not purport to predict what the committee will choose, rather it attempts to gauge what the writer feels should be in the running.  In most instances the books that are featured in the series have been touted as contenders in various online round-ups, but for the ones that are not, the inclusions are a humble plea to the committee for consideration.  It is anticipated the series will include at least 30 titles; the order which they are being presented in is arbitrary, as every book in this series is a contender.  Some of my top favorites of the lot will be done near the end.  The awards will be announced on January 22nd, hence the reviews will continue till two days before that date.

Author Jabari Asim

Artist E. B. Lewis