A review by spellingbat
Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer by Kelly Jones

5.0

It's extremely hard to describe this book and not use the word charming, because it really, really is. On the surface it seems like a simple story of a girl who finds her late great-uncle's chickens and learns how to take care of them, which sounds like a pretty staid and maybe even boring story. This is NOT a boring story. There is no swashbuckling or natural disasters in terms of action (but there is chicken theft! And magical chickens with odd little abilities!), but there is a subtle story that builds and grows on the reader, with threads of a young girl missing her recently deceased grandmother, a family adjusting to dad's unemployment and a move from a large city to a small rural town, a girl's learning self-sufficiency and problem-solving, racial identity in a town where you are biracial and you are the only "brown" kid you've seen. Illustrations add a lot of humor and fill in details and sub-plots that aren't expressed in text, and they are the perfect addition. It's a quirky, sweet, funny, extremely charming book that I will be happy to recommend to 3rd-6th graders. This would make a fantastic family read-aloud and a great discussion book.