About Tillie

The Chickens
The hens in Tillie Lays an Egg live here at Little Pond Farm, which is really just a fancy name for my big backyard. The term for a female chicken over a year old is "hen." but I simply call them my "girls."

The girls are friendly and are used to being handled by people, but to get them to pose for the book they needed to be trained. Yes, I have trained chickens! Just like you can teach a dog to do tricks, so can you teach a chicken to stand still, or come, or even pirouette! I use yummy rewards to train my chickens. They love it! (The specific type of training is called clicker training, which is what dolphin trainers use, too. Go here for more information.)

The Props
It took more than a year to find the props for Tillie. I went to flea markets, shopped ebay, and rummaged through antique stores. I don't buy everything that happens to have a chicken on it - the props had to have a special quality to them. Do you know how you can offer five different teddy bears to a baby, but the child falls in love with only one of them because that bear has magic? It's the same for me. For example, I looked at a lot of old toy trucks for the garden scene, but only one was right for the book.

Still, I managed to collect many more items than will ever be seen in a Tillie book. As a writer, I know that editing down makes a book better. This is also true with the photographs. I took a lot of test photos to get the mix of props just right.

The Photographs
When Ben Fink came to Little Pond Farm to take the photographs, I had the tableaus styled and the chickens trained. He brought his amazing eye for light and color. He knows how to move the camera angle to get the right view. Ben will move a prop a couple of inches to make the compostion, (which seemed fine before), reach a level of artistry. It is always amazing to work with him.