Deborah Freedman's "Blue Chicken"

(WTNH) - The idea for Blue Chicken actually came to me while I was reading William Carlos Williams's poem, Red Wheelbarrow ("So much depends upon/a red wheelbarrow/glazed with rainwater/beside the white chickens.") - I thought to myself, hmmm… we have a scene with a red wheelbarrow, white chickens… what else is there? Other colors? Other animals? And what happens next? Well, what happens next is that one of those chickens springs to life and wreaks havoc in a barnyard with a pot of blue paint. The innocent chicken just wants to help, but things get worse and worse-and bluer and bluer-the more she tries!

The art was done with pencil and watercolor, and assembled on Photoshop. I had tons of fun with it, and made a huge mess splashing blue paint around. Since both of my books are about art coming to life, one of my hopes is that they will inspire kids to draw or paint, maybe even to imagine their own "sequels" to my stories. On Picture Books and Literacy:

One of the things that motivates me to do what I do is that I passionately believe that sharing picture books with children is an important step toward early literacy - there is nothing more important that parents can do to help their kids become happy, life-long readers than read aloud to them, right from the very beginning. I know that New Haven Reads feels the same way, which is why I'm so happy to be celebrating my new book with them this afternoon. Info on Blue Chicken: Blue Chicken was released by Viking Children's Books on September 15. Called "simply exquisite" by Kirkus Reviews in a starred review, Blue Chicken is the story of a character that springs to life and wreaks havoc in a farmyard with a pot of blue paint. It has also received a starred review from School Library Journal, is a Junior Library Guild Selection for Fall 2011, and will be included in the 2011 exhibit "The Original Art" at the Society of Illustrators in New York.

You can read more about Blue Chicken on her website: http://www.deborahfreedman.net/book/bluechicken.html