Chanticleer and the Fox

This is a great lesson about how those who try to over flatter you, may be trying to take advantage of you. Go Chanticleer! Not my particular favorite style of illustration here, but well illustrated nonetheless.

Chanticleer is the finest rooster around, and the pride of a poor widow's flock. One day, a fox appears and through flattery alone manages to trick Chanticleer into being captured. At the last moment before he is gone forever, Chanticleer manages to trick the fox into letting him go. As the widow says, "That is the result of trusting in flattery." ( )

Caldecott Medal, 1959

A tale of a rooster who listens a little too much to the praise given to him and gets in trouble because of it. ( )

From Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, we get a beautifully illustrated story with a moral about flattery and self-control. An excellent story to introduce Chaucer to children, it could be used in a unit on the Middle Ages.

“Chanticleer and the Fox” illustrated by Barbara Cooney was given the Caldecott Medal in 1959. It is a story adapted from the Canterbury Tales about a rooster named Chanticleer with a beautiful voice who has a dream that a fox is going to try to eat him. The next day a fox approaches the rooster and tells him that he is not there to hurt him but had been friends with Chanticleer’s father and wanted to hear him sing. The rooster trusted the flattery of the fox, which eventually led to an easy capture. The tale of the rooster and the fox is one about how dangerous pride and gullibility can be. The illustrations were created with paint and have a lot of contrast, but little texture. They make the words come alive and put the reader in the world of the widow and Chanticleer while still leaving room for the reader to use his own imagination. I would read this book to students of any age to introduce classic literature as well as what life was like for peasants in the medieval times. ( )