BOOKS

Chick Yourself

by Katie Haegele

Are You My Husband? is Rachel Carpenter's good-natured spoof on P.D. Eastman's children's classic Are You My Mother?, the story of a baby bird who hatches while its mother is away. Baby goes looking for mother by asking everything it encounters--including a dog and an airplane--the pressing question: "Are you my mother?"

In Carpenter's version, the Little Chick turns 30 and promptly goes off to find a husband--and she casts an equally wide net. In Sarah Bereczki's charming illustrations we see the Little Chick set aside her knitting and scour online dating services, dance classes and AA meetings for a male version of her cartoon anthropomorphic bird self. "I can find him all by myself," boasts the waggish cover line.

The book was out for exactly one day this December when Carpenter was in Barnes and Noble and saw it sitting right between Tim Burton's and Bill Cosby's latest. It was an exciting moment, even for a writer whose stories have appeared in Atlantic Unbound, McSweeney's and One Story.

"[Publishing] is a hard business," Carpenter says during a visit to her parents' home in East Falls. (She grew up in Center City--a fact she mentions in all her bios--and now divides her time between Philly and New York.)

She adds, "That's what's different about the Little Chick. It's an item, it makes people laugh, and it sneaks up on you that it's a satire."

Carpenter says Eastman's book had been knocking around her head since she became an aunt. But one morning while she was brushing her teeth, the book's language--which just about everyone born after 1960 has committed to memory--collided with a seemingly unrelated idea that's just as much a part of the twenty- to thirtysomething collective consciousness: marriage mania.

"I know a lot of people who talk like this: 'We'll go to this party, there will be husbands there for you,'" Carpenter says. "Because of this book I've become really attuned to hearing women talk like that. It's chronic and timeless."

She doesn't sound especially perturbed, and that's the reason the book works. It's equal parts wry, knowing, smart and cute.

"We were really conscious of that in the revision stages--of not letting it be too snarky, of keeping the Little Chick sweet," Carpenter says.

And in her approach, Carpenter hit the zeitgeist on its head. Like singer Nellie McKay--whom you may not have heard of yet, but who sounds like a female Rufus Wainwright and who sings merrily, "I wanna get married/ That's why I was born"--Carpenter sucks the venom out of our societal marriage obsession, replacing it with something funny and humane.

In the original book, the baby bird finds his mother. So does Carpenter's Little Chick find what she's looking for? Let's just say her book doesn't have the classic storybook conclusion. And in case you're not sure, it's a happy ending too.

Rachel Carpenter signs Are You My Husband? Wed., Jan. 7, 6:30pm. Free. Barnes and Noble, 1805 Walnut St. 215.665.0716