A new version of the Hans Christian Andersen classic about gossip that is appropriately vapid and flibbertigibbet in tone. ( )

This book surprised me and I am unsure if I like it or not. The overall meaning of the book is to show how people should not gossip. This book shows how gossip starts out small and harmless but becomes exaggerated as more people find out. it also shows how can become twisted around until people cannot even recognize their own story. When I first picked up the book I looked through it and loved the illustrations because they were bright and simplistic. Although as reading the story and understanding the plot I was appalled at how graphic and awful the story actually was. The illustrations helped to show the emotions within the story and to show movement within the story. For example, when the owls go to tell their other owl friends about how one chicken wants to pluck out all their feathers become beautiful, it shows the owls flying through the page. ( )

Originally written in 1852, Hans Christian Andersen's Der er ganske vist! has often been translated at It's Perfectly True, or It's Absolutely True. This 2004 retelling by Mus White, accompanied by Stefan Czernecki's bold acrylic illustrations, takes a non-literal approach, rendering the title For Sure! For Sure!, a reference to the refrain of the many scandalized birds to be found in the story.

A cautionary tale about the power of gossip, it follows the transformation of a simple event - a "respectable" hen loses a feather, and comments that she looks better without it - into an outrageous tale involving five hens who pluck themselves naked and fight to the death, all for the love of a rooster. An amusing story - although by no means one of Andersen's best - that is well-told and well-illustrated in this adaptation. The cartoon-like illustrations, with their vivid colors, are the perfect complement to the humor of the tale. ( )