Happy National Chicken Month! Whether you enjoy chickens for their eggs, their legs, or their keen ability to organize themselves into human-like social hierarchies, September is the month to take time out from our busy lives to appreciate our fine-feathered fowl friends.

While I admit that I was mostly joking when I volunteered to find “famous chickens in literature” for the blog, it turns out there are actually quite a few to choose from. For the purposes of this post I’ve focused specifically on chicken characters in children’s literature , but I also briefly considered expounding on books in which chickens are kept as pets, or highlighting the most delicious descriptions of chicken dinners in literature (until I remembered that Dickens’ chicken was actually a Christmas turkey). Maybe next year.

Without further ado, I give you the top six chickens of children’s literature:

Row 1: Chicken Little/Henny Penny/Chicken Licken (folktale); Tillie in Tillie Lays an Egg by Terry Blonder Golson; Yetta in Beautiful Yetta: The Yiddish Chicken by Daniel Pinkwater. Row 2: The Little Red Hen (folktale; The Chicken in Why did the Chicken Cross the Road? by Jon Agee (et al.); Louise in Louise, The Adventures of a Chicken by Kate DiCamillo.

Did I leave out your favorite storybook hen or rooster? Let me know in the comments! _ Kate

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Kate is Promotions & Direct Mail Coordinator at Half Price Books Corporate.