THE CHICKEN LITTLE CHRONICLES: The Erudite Edition
Chicken Little Works It Out
( with great appreciation to John Keats, who is greatly respected as a brilliant 19th century poet.)
Click each underlined word in the story to find the definition
or click on word list.
How strange is Ms. Little, oh! my she shifts moods,
She’s happy one minute, then suddenly broods.
It’s up and then down and around again –then,
She’s cheerful , or sour—whatever -- which-- when!It’s well-understood, ‘cause the mess she was in,
Along with her feathers, near cost her HER SKIN.
And also her comrades , they risked the same fate.
The ‘check’ for their futures came close to a ‘mate.’
I’m happy to say at the latest report,
Miss Little fares better, a cheery good sport
Chicken Little spent innumerable hours pensively reflecting upon what she came to call “the imprudent acorn fiasco of recent memory.” In the immediate aftermath, she felt quite dejected and despondent. At times she would wallow in self-censure.
After all, her impetuousness had embroiled her esteemed friends in a perilous plight—one in which their very lives seemed inevitably ill-fated. Yet they all did miraculously escape from the pernicious fox in her den of iniquity and that should have been that! Life was expected to have resumed familiar forms, or even peaceful, unfamiliar forms , but it didn’t.....at least for awhile.
Chicken Little did try to settle down at home to a relative routine, leisurely performing all those trivial chores of quotidian existence. However, her brush with calamity had the traumatic effect of causing vicissitudes in her daily life with iterative mood shifts. One moment she was somberly morose.Then she would become blithsomely mirthful and jubilantly vivacious. Then she would revert to irasibility, then again ebullience.
Happily, and within a few weeks, however, the sullen, peevish moods began to wane , and finally disappear; thereafter cheerful optimism dominated her demeanor. She started to crave excitement and shun glumness.
Our story really begins early one morning in late October when Chicken Little awoke with a start. She decided that she must arrange a party—forthwith--to celebrate—something or other. Well, October 31 was coming up and you know what that means!
Remembering the immortal words of Montesquieu who said “one must mourn not the death of men, but their birth,” Chicken Little came to an immutable determination-- “We’ll have none of that dolorous melancholy, not now, not here, not there, nor anywhere else for that matter, and not ever again.”
With that resolution in mind , she hastily sprang out of bed,voraciously consumed her breakfast, precipitately watered her plants, swiftly counted her money, speedily dusted the furniture,summarily prepared and set out the dough to rise, expeditiously retyped the Magna Carta, hurriedly dressed and oh yes, promptly donned her favorite straw hat, then hustled out of her modest abode to see her affluent confidant , Turkey Lurkey. “She’s a veritable party pundit" thought Chicken Little,. Yes the very one with whom I should collaborate on fete details .”
As Chicken Little scampered along the meandering path to Lurkey Manor, she mused about the folicking revelry they would all have and how, at long last , she would be able to achieve expiation of all vexatious cogitations regarding impulsive blunders of recent memory. Chicken Little was exuberant because life had definitely taken a turn for the better.
Hold on there, keep reading.
There’re two parts to go,
And lots more vocab for you kiddies to know.
So ONWARD dear students, you’ll probably find,
You’ll learn many words of a scholarly kind.
