Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer, by Kelly Jones
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Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer, by Kelly Jones
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Fans of Polly Horvath or Roald Dahl will love this quirky story of a determined girl, and some extraordinary chickens. Twelve-year-old Sophie Brown feels like a fish out of water when she and her parents move from Los Angeles to the farm they’ve inherited from a great-uncle. But farm life gets more interesting when a cranky chicken appears and Sophie discovers the hen can move objects with the power of her little chicken brain: jam jars, the latch to her henhouse, the entire henhouse.... And then more of her great-uncle’s unusual chickens come home to roost. Determined, resourceful Sophie learns to care for her flock, earning money for chicken feed, collecting eggs. But when a respected local farmer tries to steal them, Sophie must find a way to keep them (and their superpowers) safe. Told in letters to Sophie’s abuela, quizzes, a chicken-care correspondence course, to-do lists, and more, Unusual Chickens is a quirky, clucky classic in the making.
Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer, by Kelly Jones- Amazon Sales Rank: #56411 in Books
- Brand: Jones, Kelly/ Kath, Katie (ILT)
- Published on: 2015-05-12
- Released on: 2015-05-12
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.60" h x .75" w x 5.80" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 224 pages
From School Library Journal Gr 4–6—Sophie Brown is new to farm life, new to being one of the only "brown people" in town (the others being her mother and Gregory, the mailman), and definitely new to caring for chickens—and these are some challenging chickens. To help herself adjust to life away from Los Angeles and her extended family, she writes letters to her great-uncle Jim and her beloved Abuelita, both recently deceased, and embarks on a correspondence course in poultry care with the mysterious Agnes of Redwood Farm Supply. Agnes's poorly typed responses assure Sophie that the chickens that keep turning up on the farm (including Henrietta, a small white hen with a permanent unibrow of fury) belonged to her great-uncle, from whom Sophie's father inherited the farm and who implores her to keep the chickens safe—and to be careful. But how will she protect chickens that are capable of levitating their own coop, becoming invisible, and turning enemies to stone? And why does the town's resident chicken expert, Ms. Griegson, seem intent on stealing Sophie's brood? Told in letters, quizzes, newspaper clippings, and delicious ink drawings reminiscent of Quentin Blake, this middle grade epistolary novel has a little magic and a lot of warm family humor. Jones delivers a dynamic Latina protagonist in Sophie, who describes her experiences in satisfying detail: the discomfort of facing microaggressions based on her heritage (such as when the town librarian assumes that she and her family are migrant workers); love and concern for her parents, both struggling to find and keep work; and willingness to learn and grow despite typical tween self-consciousness. VERDICT Readers will cheer for Sophie and clamor for more of those amazing chickens. Exceptional, indeed.—Amy Martin, Oakland Public Library, CA
Review "A delightful protagonist, interesting fowl of various breeds and a cast of appealing second-string characters make this a top pick for young readers, poultry fanciers or not." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review "Readers will cheer for Sophie and clamor for more of those amazing chickens. Exceptional, indeed."—School Library Journal, starred review "Someone has finally written a real honest-to-goodness novel with chickens! This news will excite people who like novels, people who like chickens...and chickens. It is an unusual book!" --Daniel Pinkwater, author of The Hoboken Chicken Emergency, and pioneer of chicken-lit. "The combination of real-life emotion and otherworldly farming makes for a comedic story with the right amount of pathos."--Booklist
About the Author KELLY JONES has worked as a librarian and a bookseller, and is a raiser of (much-loved, but fairly ordinary) chickens. This is her first novel. You can find her at her website: curiosityjones.net, or on Twitter: @curiosityjones. KATIE KATH earned an MFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design and works as a freelance illustrator. You can learn more about her work at ktkath.com.
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful. With a cluck cluck here and a levitation there . . . By E. R. Bird The epistolary novel has a long and storied history. At least when it comes to books written for adults. So too does it exist in novels for children, but in my experience you are far more likely to find epistolary picture books than anything over 32 pages in length. That doesn’t stop teachers, of course. As a children’s librarian I often see the kiddos come in with the assignment to read an epistolary novel and lord love a duck if you can remember one on the spot. I love hard reference questions but if you were to ask me to name five such books in one go I’d be scrambling for my internet double quick time. Of course now that I’ve read “Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer” I will at long last be able to pull at least one book from my crazy overstuffed attic of a brain instantaneously. Kelly Jones’s book manages with charm and unexpected panache to take the art of chicken farming and turn it into a really compelling narrative. Beware, though. I suspect more than one child will leave this book desirous of a bit of live poultry of their very own. You have been warned.After her dad lost his job, it really just made a lot of sense for Sophie and her family to move out of L.A. to her deceased great-uncle Jim’s farm. Still, it’s tough on her. Not only are none of her old friends writing her back but she’s having a hard time figuring out what she should do with herself. She spends some of her time writing her dead Abuelita, some of her time writing Jim himself (she doesn’t expect answers), and some of her time writing Agnes of the Redwood Farm Supply. You see, Sophie found a chicken in her back yard one day and there's something kind of strange about it. Turns out, Uncle Jim used to collect chickens that exhibited different kinds of . . . abilities. Now a local poultry farmer wants Jim's chickens for her very own and it's up to Sophie to prove that she's up to the task of raising chickens of unusual talents.There are two different types of children’s fantasy novels, as I see it. The first kind spends inordinate amounts of time world building. They will never let a single thread drop or question remain unanswered. Then there’s the second kind. These are the children’s novels where you may have some questions left at the story’s end, but you really don’t care. That’s “Unusual Chickens” for me. I simply couldn’t care two bits about the origins of these unusual chickens or why there was an entire company out there providing them in some capacity. What Ms. Jones does so well is wrap you up in the emotions of the characters and the story itself, so that details of this sort feel kind of superfluous by the end. Granted, that doesn’t mean there isn’t going to be the occasional kid demanding answers to these questions. You can’t help that.I have a bit of a thing against books that present you with unnecessary twists at their ends. If some Deus Ex Machina ending solves everything with a cute little bow then I am well and truly peeved. And there is a bit of a twist near the end of “Unusual Chickens” but it’s more of a funny one than something that makes everything turn out all right. The style of writing the entire book in letters of one sort or another works very well when it comes to revealing one of the book’s central mysteries. Throughout the story Sophie engages the help of Agnes of the Redwood Farm Supply (the company that provided her uncle with the chickens in the first place). When she at last discovers why Agnes's letters have been so intermittent and peculiar the revelation isn't too distracting, though I doubt many will see it coming.Now the book concludes with Sophie overcoming her fear of public speaking in order to do the right thing and save her chickens. She puts it this way: “One thing my parents agree on is this: if people are doing something unfair, it’s part of our job to remind them what’s fair, even if sometimes it still doesn’t turn out the way we want it to.” That’s a fair lesson for any story and a good one to drill home. I did find myself wishing a little that Sophie’s fears had been addressed a little more at the beginning of the book rather that simply solved without too much build up at the end, but that’s a minor point. I like the idea of telling kids that doing the right thing doesn’t always give you the outcome you want, but at least you have to try. Seems to have all sorts of applications in real life.In an age where publishers are being held increasingly accountable for diverse children’s fare, it’s still fair to say that “Unusual Chickens” is a rare title. I say this because it’s a book where the main character isn’t white, that’s not the point of the story, but it’s also not a fact that’s completely ignored either. Sophie has dark skin and a Latino mom. Since they’ve moved to the country (Gravenstein, CA if you want to be precise) she feels a bit of an outsider. “I miss L.A. There aren’t any people around here- especially no brown people except Gregory, our mailman.” She makes casual reference to the ICE and her mother’s understanding that “you have to be twice as honest and neighborly when everyone assumes you’re an undocumented immigrant…” And there’s the moment when Sophie mentions that the librarian still feels about assuming that Sophie was a child of the help, rather than the grandniece of the Blackbird Farm’s previous owner. A lot of books containing a character like Sophie would just mention her race casually and then fear mentioning it in any real context. I like that as an author, Jones doesn't dwell on her character's ethnicity, but neither does she pretend that it doesn't exist.You know that game you sometimes play with yourself where you think, “If I absolutely had to have a tattoo, I think I’d have one that looked like [blank]”? Well, for years I’ve only had one figure in mind. A little dancing Suzuki Beane, maybe only as large as a dime, on the inner wrist of my right hand. I’ll never get this tattoo but it makes me happy to think that it’s always an option. I am now going to add a second fictional tattoo to my roster. Accompanying Suzuki on my left wrist would be Henrietta. She’s the perpetually peeved, occasionally telekinetic, and she makes me laugh every single time I see her. Henrietta’s creator, in a sense, is the illustrator of this book, Ms. Katie Kath. I was unfamiliar with her work, prior to reading “Unusual Chickens” and from everything I can tell this is her children’s book debut. You’d never know it from her style, of course. Kath’s drawing style here has all the loose ease and skill of a Quentin Blake or a Jules Feiffer. When she draws Sophie or her family you instantly relate to them, and when she draws chickens she makes it pretty clear that no other illustrator could have brought these strange little chickies to life in quite the same way. These pages just burst with personality and we have her to thank.Now there are some fairly long sections in this book that discuss the rudimentary day-to-day realities of raising chickens. Everything from the amount of food (yes, the book contains math problems worked seamlessly into the narrative) to different kinds of housing to why gizzards need small stones inside of them. These sections are sort of like the whaling sections in “Moby Dick” or the bridge sections in “The Cardholder”. You can skip right over them and lose nothing. Still, I found them oddly compelling. People love process, particularly when that process is so foreign to their experience. I actually heard someone who had always lived in the city say to me the other day that before they read this book they didn’t know that you needed a rooster to get baby chickens. You see? Learning!I don’t say that this book is going to turn each and every last one of its readers into chicken enthusiasts. I also know that it paints a rather glowing portrait of chicken ownership that is in direct contrast to the farm situation perpetuated on farmers today. But doggone it, it’s charming to its core. We see plenty of magical animal books churned out every year. Magical zoos and magical veterinarians and magical bestiaries. So what’s wrong with extraordinary chickens as well? Best of all, you don’t have to be a fantasy fan to enjoy this book. Heck, you don’t have to like chickens. The writing is top notch, the pictures consistently funny, and the story rather moving. Everything, in fact, a good chapter book for kids should be. Hand it to someone looking for lighthearted fare but that still wants a story with a bit of bite to it. Great stuff.For ages 9-12.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful. Kids and grandma loved it. By Zenpony This book had me from the very first page. U-Schlep Hous to Hous delivery van made me smile. Lots of little things that a child reader may not pick up on, but keep it interesting for the parent, teacher, adult who may be reading along. Who among our older generation remembers being told in class to write a business letter and to follow the template format found in our English textbooks? Sophie Brown writes the letters but doesn't want to take the blame for talking in a stilted manner.The story of a family forced to move to an inherited farm because of the loss of the Dad's job, is told through a series of letter written by a 12 year old girl. She writes to her departed grandma and uncle and also to a farm supply catalog company in the hopes of finding a way to turn the dusty, lonely farm into a fun place to live among the company of chickens. I must admit, I did google the Redwood Farm Supply Company in Gravenstein, CA in the hopes of learned where to get some of these exceptional chickens. Redwood Hill Farm Supply, a goat farm in that area comes up in thesearch. They have some great products and recipes and I'll write a nice business template letter to them requesting a catalog. My grandkids ages 8 and 9 and my niece Sophie aged 7 had been working on me since last year's classroom chick hatchery project, to build a coop and get some chicks. After reading this story together, they are even more enthused and I am happy to have had the opportunity to discuss the many subjects that this book raised. Loneliness, resourcefulness, responsibility, family connections, trust and mistrust and fun and happiness. It's all in this little tale.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful. A Supernatural Series of Events By Maura Ann Rubies Sophie makes supernatural chicken discoveries upon relocating to her deceased great-uncle's farm. Her story is told through a series of letters. Many of them are addressed to dead relatives great-uncle Jim and grandmother Garcia Gonzales (querida abuelita).In some ways, Sophie is a relatable character for us. Three years ago, my daughter was the little brown girl living in a farmhouse at the end of a country road. She can identify with Sophie watching the hens dust bathe and scanning the sky for hawks flying overhead...The book includes useful information on caring for chickens with a page that helps you calculate how long a 50 lb. bag of feed and a 4 gallon waterer will last for your particular flock size. Another page allows you to calculate how long/wide your roost needs to be and how many nesting boxes are needed. You'll also find a chart and discussion of nutritional needs of chickens by category.There's also drawings of various types of coops, feeders, waterers and chickens (body, egg and temperament descriptions are found below specific hen drawings).Humorous actions and expressions are depicted in illustrations of Sophie's new life at Blackbird Farm. I appreciate the inclusion of the recipe for Migas. My daughter enjoyed the quiz "Are Chickens Right For You?"Aside from learning the origins and abilities of certain chickens, we see how vital it is to build positive community relationships. This leads to the unfolding of a surprise ending.Note:A major component of this story are Sophie's letters to her deceased great-uncle and grandmother. Initially, Sophie finds comfort in providing them with updates on her activities and asking them questions she knows they cannot answer in death. This theme intensifies and continues throughout the book.
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