Popular children's author Jan Brett visits Decorah--chickens and all!

Children's author Jan Breet (One of her award-winning white-crested black Polish chickens is on the right)

Jan Brett likes chickens.  No, wait, that doesn't quite cover what she thinks about chickens.  Jan Brett LOVES chickens!  No--even that doesn't quite cover the topic.  Jan Brett used to put a sheet down in the back seat of her Toyota Prius, so she could load up some 60 chickens and 10 ducks to carry them with her as she and her husband left Boston for their summer cabin near Tanglewood in western Massachusetts.

The chickens, she tells decorahnews.com, are pretty good travelers.  But the ducks are another matter, which is why she and her husband, Joseph Hearne, a bassist for the Boston Symphony Orchestra for over 50 years, have taken to hiring a van lately.

So it probably should have come as no surprise to the more than 700 people who filled the Decorah High School auditorium on Sunday that she had brought with her several chickens.

There's a good reason, however.  She was at her cabin in the Berkshires, talking with her book editor while feeding her chickens, and she told her editor about one particular chicken who wasn't the most attractive bird, since it was moulting, but she told the editor the chicken would soon change into a lovely bird "just like Cinderella."

That was the flash of inspiration that led to her latest book, "Cinders: A Chicken Cinderella."  Brett took the idea of a retelling of the Cinderella story, using chickens, and developed it into a children's picture book in which chickens wear exquisite ball gowns and live in buildings with historic Russian architecture.

"There's something self-important about chickens," she says--which is why she had fun creating a book with chickens as the main characters.  As she does with all of her books, she did extensive research on this latest book--including traveling to St. Petersburg, Russia for a first-hand look at all the palaces and museums, including the famous wooden structures of Novgorod.

Does Cinders become the belle of Prince Cockerel's ball?  Do her sisters regret their actions?  Jan Brett admits the plot came easily--but she said the hardest part was that she had so much fun creating the children's book "the hardest thing was ending it."