Leaving on a Jet Plan: Thinking about Eagles and Chickens. Wanting to read more @SharonDraper

While Sharon Draper read Stella By Starlight during the last keynote at the #LSUYAL2015 conference, I had to type the title of this book on my laptop. Sharon Draper read a folktale she borrowed for use in the text, but I couldn't help but think about its relevance for Chitunga - the eagle himself. I asked her where she got the tale from and she said that variations of it have been circulated for years.

In short, it goes something like this,

There once was a chicken farmer who found an eagle’s egg in his chicken coup. He put it with his chickens and soon the Eagle egg hatched.

The young eagle grew up with all the other chickens and whatever they did, the eagle did too.  He thought he was a chicken, just like them.

Since the chickens could only fly for a short distance, the eagle also learnt to fly a short distance.

He thought that was what he was supposed to do. So that was all that he thought he could do.  As a consequence, that was all he was able to do.

One day the eagle saw a bird flying high above him. He was very impressed. “Who is that?” he asked the hens around him.

“That’s the eagle, the king of the birds,” the hens told him. “He belongs to the sky. We belong to the earth, we are just chickens.”

In some variations, the eagle lives as a chicken, but in others, the eagle learns of his might and at the encouragement of the farmer and other chickens, he learns to soar as the eagle he was meant to be.

Of course, I'm not giving this tale any justice here, but the way that Sharon Draper read it in her YA book, I knew I had to get my hands on it as soon as possible. When I read the text in its entirely, I'm sure I'll have more to say.

In the meantime, I'm flying home. I'm fried.