By Pat Hutchins
Rosie the hen goes for a walk, a fox tries to eat her the entire way, and she never once notices.
There are barely more than thirty words in this book and every one of them is about a hen taking a stroll. Across the yard. Around the pond. Over the haycock, past the mill, through the fence, under the beehives, and home in time for dinner. The pictures are telling a completely different story. A fox is stalking Rosie the whole way, and on every spread he lunges, and Rosie takes one oblivious step, and he lands on a rake or in the pond or in the flour or in a hive full of bees. The words never mention him once. Your child spots him on page one and spends the rest of the book being the only one who knows.
It hands your child the one thing a two or three year old almost never gets, which is knowing more than the adult reading to them. They can't read a word and they can still tell you the real plot, so it's often the first book a child will 'read' back to you cover to cover. It's the comic end of the farm shelf. The only appetite in it belongs to a fox, and he goes hungry.