This is a quite adorable story. Anyone who has ever kept chickens really needs to read it. It works just as well as an adult novel as it would as one for children, and this edition has both a really sympathetic translation and some lovely illustrations to accompany the story. We meet Sprout, a bedraggled coup bound chicken who has big dreams. Like Jemima Puddleduck, Sprout would very much like to have an egg to hatch; unlike Jemima, Sprout is rather a wily bird. She is also a friendly creature, who happily makes friends with a lone duck, a choice which leads to her forming a life changing bond with a certain abandoned egg..... I really want people to experience this story for themselves, as it is very very sweet. With this in mind I don't want to say anything else about the story really, except that it is rare to find so much compassion and such expressive writing in a short story about chickens. It's a lovely little addition to the Waterstones Bookclub in my opinion.