We Adopted a Baby Chick

Albert, a sheep, was the focus of Smith’s We Adopted a Baby Lamb, but, in that book, Albert was an abandoned lamb in need of human care if he was to survive. Now Albert has grown up, and he “even grew horns (they were a kind of surprise).” In We Adopted a Baby Chick, all the attention that had once been lavished on cute-little-lamb Albert is being transferred to the family’s newest animal addition – Tina, a tiny, fluffy chick. And even after Tina outgrows her heat-lamped home in the family farmhouse and is moved to the barn, a space Albert must now share with her, Tina, now a chicken, still appears to be the humans’ favourite, especially when she lays eggs. Even Albert’s animal friends appear to prefer her company to his.

   Seeing how much everyone
   loves Tina makes me feel too
   big, too loud and not so special
   anymore.

Though Albert is jealous of Tina and undoubtedly wishes she had never become part of the farm, when a fox creeps into the farmyard and grabs Tina in its jaws, Albert comes to her rescue. His large size, loud bleat and big horns so intimidate the fox that it drops Tina. While the incident has caused Tina to lose a significant number of feathers, “she just needs someone with extra fluff to keep her warm.” From the event, Albert recognizes that he no longer needs to mourn the loss of his cuteness and needs instead to embrace “I’m big strong, loud and proud!”

Design-wise, each pair of facing pages contains a page of text, sometimes accompanied by spot illustrations, and a full-page illustration. While Smith’s brief text carries the main storyline, her simple cartoon-like add to the text. For example, when Tina’s encounter with the fox partially denudes her, the companion illustration reveals a sleeping Tina cuddled up to Albert.

Although We Adopted a Baby Chick can be read just as a story, parents will recognize that it speaks to the sibling rivalry that sometimes arises when a child loses her/his place in the family hierarchy as the arrival of another child arrives to disrupt that order.

Both We Adopted a Baby Lamb and We Adopted a Baby Chick are based on true stories, and the latter concludes with three colour photos, one of the adult Albert and two of Tina, first as a chick and then as a hen.