Find Unusual Chickens For The Exceptional Poultry Farmer (Unusual Chickens #1) Translated By Kelly Jones Document

empowering, and truly entertaining, this is the kind of light but satisfying story you could press into the hands of anyth orth grader with confidence they'd come away happy.
I didn't want this one to end!

Plot points of note: Sophie's mom is MexicanAmerican and her dad is Caucasian.
She is one of the very few to use her words "brown people" in the new rural town to which they've moved.
People frequently look at her with confusion, having known her great uncle who was like her father white.
Sophie's mom is a writer who pens articles for newspapers and magazines, but her dad is out of work, so their family is cashstrapped and can't afford to fix up the farm.
Sophie has to find her own creative ways to fund the care of her chickens which she does!.


Recommended for fans of the Regarding the, . . series by Kate amp Sarah Klise, For the couple days I was carrying this around reading it, I just wanted to throw it in people's faces, saying, "Look at this grumpy chicken!! She can open latches and lay glass eggs!!! She's so grumpy!!!!! Ahhhhh!!!!!"

Oh yes.
I loved this. I thought the ending was completely unrealistic and made no sense, There was no climax, just lots of small things happening, واقعا مدام نژادهای مختلف مرغهای داستان رو قاطی میکردم و گیج میشدم. I can't remember the last time I saw Daniel Pinkwater blurb a book, Of course, this one is not only about chickens a special interest for Pinkwater it even name checks Pinkwater and hisclassic, The Hoboken Chicken Emergency.
That has to be flattering, Still, Pinkwater is such a grouchy old coot that I have to believe he wouldn't praise a book unless he meant it.
Of Unusual Chickens, he wrote, "Someone has finally written a real honesttogoodness novel with chickens! This news will excite people who like novels, people who like chickens.
. . and chickens. It is an unusual book!"

That it is, Sort of. On one level, the plot is a familiar one: a city girl moves to the country and struggles to fit in and make friends.
In this case, the city girl, Sophie, and her mother are two of the only "brown people" in town they are Latina, which only increases her feelings of alienation.
They've moved out of the city because Sophie's newly unemployed father has inherited a farm from his uncle, and along with it, several "unusual" chickens.


That's where the other side of the story comes in, The chickens are not unusual in the "Martha Stewart, tinypastelegglaying" sense, but more in the "turn raccoons into stone and levitate the chicken coop" sense.
Clearly, their care calls for an exceptional poultry farmer, Sophie's quest to become that farmer parallels her inner journey as she adjusts to her new surroundings.
Of course, since we are dealing with supernatural chickens, there are many absurd and comedic stops along the way.


Firsttime novelist Kelly Jones tells Sophie's story mostly through letters to her deceased grandmother, her greatuncle, and Agnes, the farmer who originally sold the unusual chickens.
This farmer occasionally writes back, in letters whose erratic spelling and punctuation she blames on a malfunctioning typewriter this may be a ruse the unraveling of Agnes's mystery provides one of the more entertaining threads of this tale.
The candid firstperson narraton allows Sophie's practical, wry, tween voice to shine through, and it is an appealing and authentic voice.
There's a nice balance between supernatural comedy and real world concerns, and Katie Kath's line drawings play up the humor.


Unusual Chickens is a small gem of a book, written with a light touch and a sensitive heart.
I'll be surprised if it doesn't show up on the Notable Books list, though it's probably a long shot for the Newbery.

Loved it. Twelveyearold Sophie Brown feels like a fish out of water when she and her parents move from Los Angeles to the farm theyve inherited from a greatuncle.
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 greatuncles 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.


This is such a funny book, and the illustrations bring the chickens to life.
Sophie tells her story through letters to her deceased grandmother and greatuncle, and letters to and from the woman who sold her greatuncle the exceptional chickens.
The chickens all have their own little personalities, which makes reading about them especially fun, Bonus: after reading the book, I knew a lot more about chickens than I ever thought I would.
Unfortunately, the book isn't out until May of next year, but if you love quirky, fun middle grade, you should add this one to your toberead list now.
This is a sweet middleschool book, for people who love chickens, and for those who are chicken curious.


This is the tale of a youngster who inherits her great uncles chickens, only she doesn't know her great uncle has chickens.
And each chicken has a super power, so not only does she have to learn to take care of chickens in general, she has to learn to take care of these special, unusual chickens.


It has light humor, information for those who have never had a chicken so you can learn about that, as well as well written characters.


And that is about all I am going to say, otehr than I havechickens, so I might be a little prejudiced towards chicken based stories.
I admire authors that can pull off wellwritten epistolary novels, To find the right balance between epistle and narrative without losing the reader is tricky to say the least.
Too many internal thoughts by the character and you threaten to bore the reader, Too many flashbacks and you lose the immediacy of the action, Too few points of view and you wonder what motivates the other characters, If I were a writer I would think the chances of writing a boring, passive story would skyrocket with this format.
Not so for Kelly Jones, She manages the technique well creating a strong character voice with humor and using few words creating a strong narrative arc and setting.
Not easy, but she kept my interest throughout the story, Some might feel pingponged by all the chicken facts, However, Jones nicely ties them in with Sophie's superstitions of what she thinks she is seeing and the scientific facts.
A clever juxtaposition, but we will get to that later,

Twelveyearold Sophie Brown has moved from Los Angeles to a farm that her family inherited from her mother's greatuncle.
Her mom knows how to run a farm but she is working fulltime and can't help explain things.
Sophie's dad lost his job and he's somewhat useless at figuring out equipment or even pruning.
Sophie's got more smarts doing research at the library and contacting experts by writing letters when she's faced with a problem.
Her dad could learn a thing or two from her, Sophie explores the farm on her own finding a hen pecking around a hen house, She names her hen, Henrietta, and is off to the library to learn how to take care of chickens.
Sophie finds an advertisement in the barn for the Redwood Farm Supply company and writes them an oldfashioned letter, when she can't find them on the World Wide Web, asking for advice on caring for chickens.
When a woman shows up at the

farm saying she lost a chicken that looks like Henrietta, Sophie does some research only to find out things are not as they seem.
Sophie meets another kid her age and gets help solving her chicken mystery,

Sophie writes letters to her dead grandma and Uncle Jim, The epistolary format works well in this regard as it helps keep them alive and shows that Sophie really misses them.
My mom died this summer and I find myself talking to her in my head, much like Sophie's letters.
I do the same thing with my grandma who I was close to when she was alive.
Kelly Jones creates a strong and funny voice as Sophie corresponds with them, They don't write back so it's important when the author adds the correspondence with Agnes at the Redwood Farm Supply company.
Her letters are full of typos and there is something fishy about them even though her advice is sound.
The author does a great job balancing internal monologue with action and dialogue to keep my interest going.


Sophie's mom is smart, her dad struggles with problemsolving, and Sophie dives right into things not feeling sorry for herself nor lacking courage to try new things.
She's terrified of speaking but recognizes when she needs to say something even when her knees are clanging together.
Her mixed heritage and the townspeople's racist stereotyping is subtly shown in different situations, Sophie doesn't take it personally, She expects it and recognizes that comments were made in ignorance versus maliciousness, The comments range from people assuming Sophie's mom is from Mexico when she was born in the United States and is as American as them or the librarian assuming Sophie is a migrant worker.


Sophie describes the chickens like magic, One floats. One disappears. One is like Medusa. Eventually, Sophie learns all the unusual characteristics of the chickens from scientific facts, I was a bit confused by this at first like Sophie but it becomes clear as the author shows right after each incident the reason it happened such as the floating chicken.
If the explanations didn't come right away I would have been really lost and it helps setup for the twist at the end.
I did think the motivations of the villain were not clear, The explanation at the end was somewhat weak, but it doesn't take away from the other fun plot surprises.


Our library doesn't have bucketfuls of children's epistolary novels, The few I can think of are "Dear Mr, Henshaw" or "Stargirl. " Actually more picture books spring to mind such as "The Day the Crayons Quit" or "I Wanna Iguana" or "Dectective LaRue: letters from the investigation" or "The Jolly Postman.
" Teachers like the picture books as mentor texts so I might be more in tune with them than fiction.
Whether the epistolary novel is hard to write or not, or few and far between, Kelly Jones hatched a winner with this one.



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