Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional ..., Kelly Jones
Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional ..., Kelly Jones
List: $15.00 | Sale: $10.50
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Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer

Author: Kelly Jones

Narrator: Kyla Garcia

Unabridged: 3 hr 55 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/10/2019

Synopsis

Fans of Katherine Applegate and Erin Entrada Kelly 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.

About The Author

KELLY JONES has been a librarian and a bookseller and is a raiser of (much-loved but fairly ordinary) chickens. She is now a novelist and the author of Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer and its sequel Are You Ready to Hatch an Unusual Chicken, and the feminist, Regency romp: Murder, Magic, and What We Wore. You can find her at her website: curiosityjones.net, or on Twitter and Instagram: @curiosityjones.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Betsy on May 31, 2015

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 co......more

Goodreads review by Lois on June 18, 2016

What a nice book. Apparently, if I want to read books that aren't wall-to-wall horror-fests, I need to branch out in my genres. A 12-year-old girl (what is it with 12-year-old protags in this genre?) moves with her family from LA when they inherit her great-uncle's somewhat run-down rural California......more

Goodreads review by Liviania on May 24, 2015

The back of UNUSUAL CHICKENS FOR THE EXCEPTIONAL POULTRY FARMER recommends the book to fans of Roald Dahl, which is a good call. It doesn't have his particularly wicked humor or sense of real menace, but it does have his matter-of-fact magic and a young protagonist who succeeds through a mixture of......more

Goodreads review by Renata on November 21, 2016

man I loved this!! So sweet and funny. Also I loved how it covertly shows microaggressions and the importance of representation--Sophie is half white, half Latina and she notes how the librarian is super nice to her because she originally assumed that Sophie was the daughter of a farm laborer, rathe......more

Goodreads review by Rachel on July 06, 2015

There are many things to love about this book, and I regularly repeated them to myself so that I would finish it. Excellent voice in Sophie. Unique storytelling approach in the mostly one way epistolary novel. I loved the telling of the being the new person, the different, in such a different and ge......more

Quotes

"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 

Awards

  • Oklahoma Sequoyah Children's Book Master List
  • Washington State Scandiuzzi Children's Book Award
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