The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly    by Sun-mi Hwang & Nomoco Order:  USA  Can Penguin, 2013 (2013) Softcover, e-Book      Reviewed by Jessica Maguire In this modern Korean fable (translated by Chi-Young Kim), Sprout, a hen on an egg farm, dreams of being free from her cage to roam the outdoors and hatch her own egg and raise her very own chick. Her wish comes true, but not in the way she thinks. Sprout, past her egg laying prime, is culled and left for dead. She finds herself suddenly thrust into the outdoors, a place cold, cruel and not at all as she had imagined it to be. But friendship comes in strange places and the sacrifices of friends means that Sprout soon finds herself with an egg of her very own to care for and hatch. When the chick hatches she comes to realize that he is not of her kind; he is a duck. But she loves him all the same. Together, Sprout and Baby face many hardships and prejudices as Baby grows from a cute, fuzzy duckling into a stunning mallard. It is Sprout's very name that perhaps best sums up this hauntingly touching novel as 'a sprout grew into a leaf and embraced the wind and sun before falling and rotting and turning into mulch for bringing fragrant flowers into bloom.' The target audience being readers aged eighteen and up, this novel, as Sprout's name suggests, embodies the very circle of life: birth, life, death, and a return to the earth to repeat the cycle. Note: Opinions expressed in reviews and articles on this site are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of BookLoons. Find more Contemporary books on our Shelves or in our book Reviews