Wild Chicks - Setting

Setting

The main protagonists are four – later five – girls: Sprotte (Charlotte), who is the spunky yet friendly main narrator, her best friend Frieda, a level-headed girl who is a member of Terre des hommes, shy and bespectacled Trude, who is unsure because of her obesity, and her best friend, the beautiful, shallow and vain, yet amicable Melanie. Later, they are joined by Wilma, a tough boys-hating tomboy, who is later revealed as a lesbian. In the inaugural 1993 book Die Wilden Hühner, they are all eight to nine years old, and in the hitherto last book Die Wilden Hühner und die Liebe (2003), they are all 13 to 14 years old. All Wild Chicks wear a chicken's feather around their neck and have sworn to never kill or eat chicken.

In a 2007 interview, Funke said she identifies most with Sprotte, but wishes to have been more like Frieda. Asked why she made Wilma a lesbian, she answered: "I have friends who are lesbian, so this... is a normal part of life. It would have been boring... if Wilma had fallen in love with a boy, I already covered that with all the others." Funke also asserted that the main message of the fifth book, where all fall in love, is "tolerance and respect for the feelings of other people."

Throughout the entire series, the Wild Chicks encounter a boys' gang called the Pygmies ("die Pygmäen"): their leader is the self-confident, yet good natured Fred, small but cocky Torte, tough Willi (who is haunted by a violent father) and the esoteric Steve, who is seldom seen without his Tarot cards. On the author's homepage, she reveals that all Pygmies wear an earring as their trademark and have sworn to defend mankind versus "criminals, pirates, Nazis, cannibals and vicious teachers". At first, Wild Chicks and Pygmies form a boys-against-girls rivalry and play pranks on each other, but in later books, Sprotte / Fred and Melanie / Willi (latter temporarily) become a couple, and Steve and Wilma good friends.

Other regular characters in the series include Sprotte's chaotic but loving mother Sybille her on-and-off boyfriend Thorben Mossmann (whom Sprotte dislikes), Sprotte's cranky, fiercely independent grandmother Oma Slättberg (Grandma Slättberg), and Frau Rose (Ms. Rose), the Wild Chicks' (and the Pygmies') teacher.

Many of the series' protagonists come from dysfunctional families: Sprotte's mother Sybille is a single mother who works late hours as a taxi driver, Frieda's father constantly prefers her brothers, Trude's father has divorced her biological mother and is living with a woman Trude loathes, Melanie's parents are unemployed and poor, and Wilma's parents are rich but extremely demanding, complaining when she fails to write something worse than an "A". Willi's father is an alcoholic who constantly beats up his mother and son.

In 2008, German author Thomas Schmid wrote the novelisation of the third Wild Chicks film, Die wilden Hühner und das Leben. In this book, Schmid brings the Wild Chicks universe to a closure. On a tumultuous school trip, both Wild Chicks and Pygmies realise that they have outgrown their gang. They remain friends, and Sprotte recruits three young girls who take over their mantle as new Wild Chicks. Sprotte and Fred quarrel but remain a couple, Sprotte's mother becomes pregnant, Frieda hooks up with Willi and Trude with Steve. Torte's family emigrates to Denmark, Wilma comes out as lesbian and wants to become an actress, and Melanie decides to live her own life.