When a little rooster, scratching for his supper, finds a diamond button, he’s delighted to have something special to take home to his poor old mistress. But before he can peck it up, it’s snatched from under his beak by a rich, greedy sultan who wants to add it to his heaps of diamond buttons at the palace. Determined to get back his button, the little rooster follows the sultan and his servants, who try hard to get rid of him. Right keeps on besting might, with ultimately hilarious consequences.

Celia Barker Lottridge is best known for her award-winning retellings of folk tales including The Name of the Tree and Music for the Tsar of the Sea. The Little Rooster and the Diamond Button, based on a classic Hungarian folk tale, is a splendid addition to her work as both writer and storyteller, and anyone who has heard Lottridge in performance will immediately hear the resonant timbre of her voice echoing through its pages. What makes this retelling work so well is Lottridge’s careful pacing, which struts and pecks and flaps its wings exactly like the little rooster. Lottridge also allows herself just enough distance from the story to be an objective observer, and nowhere is this stance more satisfying than in the closing moments of the story, when the little rooster tells his tale to the worms and bugs in his own yard.

Joanne Fitzgerald, who illustrated Lottridge’s Ten Small Tales, has created rich watercolour illustrations that not only mirror the story’s liveliness but also add their own wry humour to the telling. Fitzgerald’s illustrations capture the bright airiness of Lottridge’s text. Each spread also has a striking border that playfully picks up elements in the story and will especially delight younger readers.