When Chickens Grow Teeth: A Story from the French

by Guy de Maupassant, Wendy Anderson Halperin

A cafe keeper in a small French village cannot escape from his wife's silly plan to have him hatch eggs in the bed to which he is confined.

Genres: Short Stories

1 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1996

About the author

Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was a popular 19th-century French writer. He is one of the fathers of the modern short story. A protege of Flaubert, Maupassant's short stories are characterized by their economy of style and their efficient effortless dénouement. He also wrote six short novels. A number of his stories often denote the futility of war and the innocent civilians who get crushed in it - many are set during the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s.

Reviews

[Mir · Rating 3 out of 5]

I assume that this was originally a short story, and not intended for children. I'm not sure what to make of it, and it being in translation only adds to my uncertainty. The title is not really relevant as far as I can deduce -- it is not about chicken growing teeth but about a man whose wife forces him to keep eggs warm while he is bedridden, which is I guess sort of funny but doesn't strike me as hugely hilarious, absurd, or impossible. Is the title a commentary on the likeliness of the pair getting along better? The wife is portrayed as a horrible shrew, yet there is ambiguity left in the text as to whether or not she has some justification; she works very hard and we don't know if her husband does. They seem to be doing all right financially but it also seems that he sits around eating and gossiping. He has all the friends, they even sit by his bedside week after week, but if he's so popular why did he marry this unlikable woman? Was the property hers? Was she nice before her marriage? The reader doesn't know.

For kids the best part of this book will probably be the illustrations of chicks hatching.

[Jessica Marquis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn’t love this. I was so excited to read it: Wendy Anderson Halperin’s illustrations PLUS a story by deMaupassant? Trop cool.
Unfortunately, the story is underwhelming. The affable French cafe owner is a great character, the idea that he would use his time in bed, recovering from a fall, to hatch chicks is a fun one, but his cranky wife is just so disagreeable and rude that it kind of bummed us out, and took away from the fun of the story.

[Jordan Plank · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a silly book about a café owner and his wife. The café owner ends up confined to his bed and to make himself useful his wife comes up with the idea that he should be hatching eggs while in bed. So he does and at the end of the book he has one hatch. The illustrations in this book are good and can tell the story well.