Why this book

In Korea this little book became a phenomenon — millions of copies, an animated film that filled cinemas, a story parents and grandparents pass down. Its heroine is a hen, yet her longing to become a mother speaks to everyone. Listen.

The Story

Our hen lives crammed in a wire cage in a laying shed, one of many hens who eat, lay, and never move. Each morning she pushes out an egg. But before it is even warm, a farmer's hand reaches in and carries it away.

Day after day it is the same: lay, and lose. The other caged hens have given up wishing for anything at all. But something in her refuses to go numb, and the sight of her stolen eggs leaves a hollow ache she cannot name.

She watches the yard hens outside warm their eggs and cluck over chicks, and a single wish takes root in her: to hatch just one egg and watch a chick step into the light. Therefore she names that wish and holds it like a seed.

Because her whole heart is bent on that dream, she loses her appetite and stops laying. Therefore the farmer judges her used up. He pulls her limp body from the cage and tosses her onto the Hole of Death — the pit where spent hens are thrown to die.

That night a weasel slinks into the pit to feed on the dying. But a wild mallard duck the yard calls Straggler swoops down, hissing and beating his wings, and drives the weasel off. Therefore our hen, half-dead in the pit, is spared.

Clawing free of the pit, she chooses her own name at last: Sprout — the leaf that clings to the branch, soaks up sun, and feeds the whole tree. It is humble work, but it is hers, and no farmer can take it.

Outside the fence the world is vast and cold. Sprout scratches for stray seeds and hides from prowling dangers in the dark. It is a hard, hungry freedom. But for the first time no wire pens her in, and she can walk wherever she chooses.

Sprout limps to the barnyard and begs to belong. But the proud rooster and his hen drive her off, and the guard dog snaps at her heels. Therefore she is left to sleep alone in the open field, free yet utterly unwanted.

One grey morning, foraging in the reeds by the pond, Sprout discovers an egg lying abandoned in a hollow of grass, still faintly warm. Her old dream flares awake. Therefore she settles her thin body over it and begins to brood.

Straggler the mallard finds her there and, strangely, stays close, standing watch through the cold nights while Sprout keeps the egg warm. She does not understand why he guards them. But she is grateful, and slowly she trusts him.

Night after night the pattern holds: Sprout on the egg, Straggler standing sentry at the water's edge, the weasel circling somewhere in the dark. The odd mallard barely eats, growing thin from his lonely watch. But he never once leaves his post.

Then one night the weasel comes for the egg, and Straggler throws himself into the dark to fight it. At dawn Sprout finds only his scattered feathers. Therefore she understands at last: the egg is his, and he died guarding his own child.

Days later the shell cracks and a wet little head pushes out — But it is not a chick. It is a duckling, webbed feet and all. Sprout blinks at this child who is nothing like her, therefore she simply gathers him close and calls him her own.

She names the duckling Baby and raises him fiercely. When he waddles to the pond and slips into the water, Sprout panics — she cannot swim and fears he will drown. But Baby glides out gleaming and happy, and she learns to love what she cannot follow.

Sprout cannot teach Baby to swim or to dabble for weeds, for she has never done these things. Therefore she watches from the bank and lets the pond be his teacher, loving him enough to let him be wholly himself, unlike her in every way.

The barnyard mocks them still — a scruffy hen and her duck son, neither one belonging anywhere. But Sprout no longer cares for their approval. She has her child, and their strange little family on the water's edge is enough to fill her days.

As Baby matures, Sprout notices him gazing up whenever wild geese cross the sky, a restlessness stirring in his wings. She feels the coming parting like a stone in her chest. But she says nothing, for she will not clip the very flight she gave him.

As the seasons turn, Baby grows into a strong young drake with a bright green head. When a flock of wild ducks settles on the pond, their leader watches him fly and judges him worthy. Therefore Baby is chosen to be their sentinel, their guard on the long journey ahead.

Winter presses in, and the wild flock must fly south. Sprout knows Baby belongs to the sky, not to her muddy shore. Therefore she tells him to go. She watches her son climb into the cold air with the others and vanish over the hills.

For days after Baby leaves, Sprout returns to the empty shore and looks north, half-expecting his green head on the water. He does not come. Therefore she folds the missing of him into her heart and carries on, the way all mothers must.

Now Sprout is alone again, and she is old — her feathers thin, her steps slow. But she is not bitter. She hatched an egg, she raised a child, and she watched him fly. Therefore the one wish of her whole life has been answered.

On a frozen evening the weasel comes to her one final time. But this weasel is gaunt and starving, her belly slack, her own hungry kits crying in a den nearby. Sprout looks into her enemy's eyes and sees, at last, another mother.

So Sprout, who has known the ache of a hungry child, makes her final choice. She stops running. She offers her tired body to the weasel, therefore giving her own life so that the weasel's kits might live through the winter.

What it means

And as her eyes close, Sprout feels something loosen and lift. Her body stays on the cold ground, but something bright rises from it, light and free, climbing into the wide grey sky. The hen who dreamed she could fly, at the very end, flies.

Sprout's dream was never really about wings. It was about becoming a mother, about choosing who to love and what to give. She teaches us that a life is measured not by the cage we are born in, but by the one true wish we refuse to surrender — and by what we are willing to give for another.

🎧 Read-along audio is being prepared — text-only for now.