Handa's Hen

The Luo tribe of south-west Kenya, along with the landscape and wildlife of the country, provide the inspiration for this popular counting book. When Handa can’t find her grandma’s hen one morning, her friend Akeyo helps her look. Of course, en route they see various other creatures: two butterflies, three mice, four lizards and so on. The two texts in this version (Albanian/English) sit well together with enough spacing and differences in font to distinguish them visually. There’s just one page towards the end where the two languages seem to merge into one chunk rather than two distinct texts because they’re too close together, but this is a minor transgression. Vivid colour illustrations capture the setting beautifully, supporting the narrative and showing the animals clearly enough to count together. The ending is guaranteed to please – just when the girls are about to give up looking, they hear a chirping sound from under a bush and what do they find? The hen with ten little chicks, of course. (Available in 22 dual language editions and Big Book English only.)