Interrupting chicken and the elephant of surprise

by David Ezra Stein

Little Red Chicken comes home with a homework assignment: find the “elephant of surprise” in stories. As Papa explains that her teacher probably meant an “element of surprise,” their reading becomes a playful contest between his explanations and her elephant-filled imagination.

Big Idea

Writers shape readers’ expectations through pacing, repetition, and surprise. Little Red Chicken’s creative misunderstanding also shows how listening to an unexpected idea can open new storytelling possibilities.

Discussion Questions

1.Why does Little Red Chicken’s idea of an “elephant of surprise” make sense to her? What does Papa understand differently?
2.How do the illustrations help us decide whether to agree with Papa or Little Red Chicken?
3.When did you begin expecting another elephant? How did that expectation change the way you listened?
4.What do Papa and Little Red Chicken each contribute to their shared storytelling? How might their reading change if either one stopped participating?
5.What makes a surprise satisfying rather than simply confusing? How could you add a surprising event that still belongs in your own story?

Classroom Activities

Pace-Write It! An Elephant at the Page Turn

Students create a four-panel folded story in which an ordinary situation leads to an unexpected elephant appearance. Inspired by Little Red Chicken and Papa’s different interpretations, students use dialogue, a deliberate pause, and a hidden reveal to test how words, pictures, and page turns control surprise. Younger students may draw and dictate; older students can plant a clue and develop a meaningful consequence.

Pace-Write It! An Elephant at the Page Turn

Lesson Plan

⏱ 45 minutes📦 A copy of the book, paper, pencils, crayons or markers, and a board or chart paper; optional sticky notes for partner feedback

Learning Goals

Explain the difference between an expected event and a surprising event using evidence from words or illustrations.
Describe how Little Red Chicken’s and Papa’s different understandings generate dialogue and humor.
Create a short illustrated narrative with a setup, anticipation, reveal, and response.
Use a page turn, sentence length, or punctuation to influence reading pace.
Revise a story after observing a partner’s response to its surprise.

Activity Steps

1.Read the book aloud, allowing students time to examine the illustrations. Discuss the difference between “element” and “elephant” and identify a moment when the pictures contribute to the joke.
2.Revisit one storytelling interruption. Ask students what they expected, what happened instead, and where the reader needed to pause.
3.Model folding a sheet into a four-page booklet. Label the planning sequence: ordinary situation, approaching surprise, elephant reveal, and character response.
4.Have students draw and write their stories, keeping the elephant concealed until the reveal page. Encourage K–2 students to dictate or use speech bubbles; challenge grades 3–5 to include a clue and purposeful sentence-length changes.
5.Pair students to read their booklets aloud without showing the reveal early. Partners identify where they felt anticipation and whether the surprise connected to the setup.
6.Invite students to revise one pacing choice, then share selected stories and explain how the revision affected the reading.

Standards Connections

ELA: CCSS RL.K.7, RL.1.7, RL.2.7 — Explore how illustrations support understanding of characters, events, and story meaning.
ELA: CCSS RL.3.3 — Describe characters and explain how their actions contribute to the sequence of events.
ELA: CCSS W.K.3–W.5.3 — Develop grade-appropriate illustrated, dictated, or written narratives with sequenced events and responses.
ELA: CCSS SL.K.1–SL.5.1 — Participate in collaborative conversations, listen to others, and build on their ideas.
ELA: CCSS W.3.5–W.5.5 — Strengthen writing through planning, revising, and editing with support.

Pace-Write-Read Study with Pace-Write It!

In David Ezra Stein’s Interrupting Chicken and the Elephant of Surprise, a small difference in sound produces a large storytelling possibility. Little Red Chicken hears “elephant” where Papa understands “element,” and their competing interpretations turn homework into a lively exchange. For young writers, the book demonstrates that voice and wordplay can drive a plot: the misunderstanding is not an extra joke attached to the story but the engine that keeps it moving. A Pace-Write-Read study asks students to notice how quickly they move through a passage, write with a similar craft intention, and then read their work aloud to test its effect. In this book, Papa’s reading and Little Red Chicken’s interruptions establish and disrupt expectations. Dialogue, illustrations, and page turns work together to make readers anticipate a surprise while still enjoying its arrival. Students can borrow this structure without copying the book: establish something ordinary, make the audience wait, introduce an unexpected change, and leave room for a reaction.

Element	How to notice or teach it in the novel
Pacing	Track the movement between Papa’s explanations, shared reading, and Little Red Chicken’s interruptions. Read one exchange with no pauses and then with deliberate pauses to hear how timing changes the humor.
Plot	Map the homework problem, the disagreement about “elephant” and “element,” and the elephant-centered surprises. Ask how the misunderstanding causes the next event rather than merely decorating it.
Prosody	Give Papa an explanatory reading voice and Little Red Chicken an eager, insistent one, adjusting these interpretations when the text suggests a change. Discuss how stress on “elephant” or “element” makes their disagreement audible.
Word	Place “element” and “elephant” side by side and say them slowly. Explore how similar sounds can create very different mental pictures and launch an entire story.
Concept	Define an element of surprise as something unexpected in a story, then distinguish that craft concept from Little Red Chicken’s literal elephant. Invite students to explain why an elephant might sometimes serve as an element of surprise.
Voice & Worldview	Little Red Chicken approaches reading with imaginative certainty, while Papa initially approaches the assignment through explanation and correction. Ask students how each character’s way of seeing the world shapes what they say.
Point of View	Distinguish who speaks in an exchange from whose understanding the audience shares. Retell a moment first as Papa and then as Little Red Chicken to compare their interpretations without assuming either character narrates the whole book.
Setting & Place	Notice the difference between the parent-child reading setting and the worlds of the stories they explore. Discuss how an elephant feels surprising because of the particular story space it enters.
Original Characters	Study how Stein gives a small chicken a distinctive combination of enthusiasm, confidence, and inventiveness. Have students create a new character whose particular misunderstanding could generate a different story.
Dialogue	Identify exchanges in which Papa explains and Little Red Chicken counters with her own interpretation. Ask students to write a brief conversation that reveals two different beliefs without a narrator explaining them.
Details	Look closely at expressions, gestures, and elephant-related visual evidence. Ask which small detail helps readers understand a character’s reaction before anyone explains it.
Descriptions	Compare what the words describe with what the pictures supply. Let students describe one elephant appearance aloud, then decide which descriptive words their own illustration could make unnecessary.
Firsts	Revisit the first presentation of the homework misunderstanding and the first elephant surprise. Discuss how these introductions teach readers what kind of playful reading experience to expect.
Immediacy & Engagement	Notice how the homework disagreement quickly gives readers a question to follow: will Papa’s explanation or Little Red Chicken’s idea prevail? Have students open a draft with a similarly immediate character problem.
Story Scenes, Summaries & Structures	Identify the enclosing story of Papa and Little Red Chicken reading together and the stories encountered inside it. Explain how returning to their conversation connects the separate reading episodes.
Tension / Suspense / Surprise	Separate the anticipation of what Little Red Chicken will do next from the moment an elephant is revealed. Ask whether knowing that an elephant may appear eliminates the fun or changes the kind of suspense.
Flashback, Flash-Forward, Cliffhanger	Use this book primarily to study anticipation rather than treating its embedded stories as flashbacks. As a transfer exercise, students can end a booklet page just before the elephant appears to create a small cliffhanger.
Page Turns and Chapter Breaks	Study what readers know immediately before and after selected page turns. Since this is a picture book rather than a chapter book, focus on how a turn can conceal information and time a reveal.
Pace & Creativity	Little Red Chicken’s imaginative interventions interrupt an expected storytelling path. Invite students to slow an ordinary scene briefly, then change its direction with one unexpected but connected idea.
Play	Treat the “elephant/element” misunderstanding as an invitation to explore language rather than simply an error to correct. Generate other playful mishearings while keeping the actual meanings clear.
Performance	Have partners perform Papa and Little Red Chicken’s exchanges using the book’s wording. Rehearse waiting for a partner’s line and choosing a pause that makes the interruption funny without making the dialogue unclear.
Personality	Collect evidence of Little Red Chicken’s persistence and Papa’s responses to it. Ask students to show a personality trait through a line of dialogue and a gesture rather than naming the trait.
Humor	Examine the combination of sound-based wordplay, mismatched expectations, and the visual absurdity of elephants in unexpected stories. Ask which parts of a joke depend on hearing the words and which depend on seeing the art.
Pause	Pause before showing a selected elephant reveal, then allow quiet viewing time afterward. Compare the effect with rushing directly into Papa’s or Little Red Chicken’s next response.
Poetry / Poetic Devices	Although the book is not a verse narrative, “element/elephant” offers a strong example of sound play. Have students listen for repeated sounds and explain how sound can carry meaning and humor in prose.
Repetition	Trace the recurring disagreement and renewed expectation of elephants. Discuss how a repeated idea becomes a pattern that readers recognize, anticipate, and enjoy seeing varied.
Rhythm	Tap the conversational beats of explanation, interruption, and response. Students can imitate that exchange pattern in a new dialogue while varying the length of each speaker’s turn.
Punctuation	Inspect punctuation in a lively exchange and test how it guides phrasing, emphasis, and stopping. In student drafts, choose punctuation that clarifies an excited interruption rather than adding marks merely for decoration.
Questions	Explore how uncertainty about the assignment keeps the conversation moving. Ask students to plant a genuine reader question before their reveal, such as what could be making an unexpectedly large noise.
Compare-Contrast	Compare Papa’s understanding of the assignment with Little Red Chicken’s, and compare an expected story event with an elephant-altered event. Require evidence from both words and pictures.
Objects	Notice how the books being read support the homework task and give the characters shared material to discuss. In student stories, use an ordinary object, such as a book or doorway, to establish scale when an elephant appears.
Threes	Explore how repeated reading episodes build a pattern, counting together rather than assuming every pattern follows a rule of three. As an extension, students can try two similar expectations followed by a changed third event.
Lists	Build a class list of the expectations and elephant surprises students notice; the list is an analysis tool, not a claim that the book is a list narrative. Students can use a short planning list to compare possible surprises before selecting one.
White Space & Negative Space	Examine where relatively open areas around words or figures focus attention, contrasting them with busier illustrations. Students can leave visual breathing room around a reaction so readers notice it.
Art & Graphics	Ask what the illustrations reveal that Papa’s explanation alone would not. Explore how the relationship between spoken claims and visible elephants creates meaning that neither words nor pictures would produce alone.
Interactives & Gamification	Turn a rereading into an evidence hunt: students predict an elephant appearance and then identify what the spread actually shows. Frame this as a classroom reading game rather than a built-in interactive feature of the book.
Placement	Study where characters, text, and elephant imagery appear on selected spreads and how that arrangement guides attention. Students can move a speech bubble or reveal image to test what their audience notices first.
Form	Discuss how the picture-book form lets readers hear a conversation while seeing evidence that complicates it. Challenge students to make their words and pictures contribute different information.
Dummy	Explain that a dummy is a rough model used to plan a picture book. Students can create a folded-paper dummy that keeps the elephant hidden until a planned page turn, borrowing the book’s attention to reveal timing.
Passion	Discuss how Little Red Chicken’s enthusiasm makes the homework encounter lively and imaginative. Ask students to choose a surprising subject they genuinely enjoy so their own storytelling carries similar energy.

Pace-Write It!

20-minute task: “Wait for the Elephant!” Minutes 0–3: Revisit the “element/elephant” misunderstanding and one reveal; name how the words, picture, and reading pause work together. Minutes 3–5: Fold a sheet into a four-page booklet and plan an ordinary event, a clue, an elephant reveal, and a response. Minutes 5–12: Draw and write the booklet, placing the elephant only after the planned page turn; include a Papa-like practical voice and a Little Red Chicken–like imaginative voice, using original characters if preferred. K–2 students may dictate dialogue; grades 3–5 should add a clue that becomes meaningful after the reveal. Minutes 12–17: Read with a partner, pausing before the reveal without showing it early; the listener identifies the moment of greatest anticipation. Minutes 17–20: Revise one sentence, picture placement, or pause, then reread the changed moment and explain how the pacing improved.