A man goes to the mountains hunting for a bird to keep in his home. He finds an eaglet and rears it in the hen pen, as it were just another chick. After some years, a wise man appears, who, as soon as he sees the eagle, points out that the bird is not a hen, but an eagle. The man agrees that it is an eagle, but states that its behavior is the one of a hen, since it has been reared like one of them.

The wise man suggests to him testing the eagle to prove that he is wrong. The test fails several times, until, in the last try, when the eagle is on the summit of the mountain, staring at the Sun, it finally recognizes itself and flies high, up in the sky to never come back.

The story was written by James Aggrey (Ghana), dead in 1927, and it was not only Wolf Erlbruch’s first picture book for children but it also got a widespread acclaim from critics.

“… a beautiful parable about group and individual human existence” (Babar).