Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer
The Unusual Chickens series, Book 1
Kelly Jones
Yearling
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Humor
Themes: Avians, Country Tales, Cross-Genre, Diversity, Girl Power, Thieves
****
Description
When twelve-year-old Sophie Brown moves to Blackbird Farm in rural California, she doesn't know what to make of the place. She's been an apartment-dwelling city girl all her life, though her father claims they once visited the farm when she was too little to remember. It's a sprawling place full of overgrown grapevines, junk-filled barns, a disused chicken coop... or maybe not so disused. When Sophie spots a little white hen in the blackberries, she realizes not all of her late great-uncle's flock is gone. And when she watches that little hen levitate a spilled jar of water, she realizes that his chickens were very, very unusual indeed. With the help of a dusty old catalog she finds among the junk from Redwood Farm Supply (which advertises unusual chickens for exceptional poultry farmers, so surely they must be experts on the matter), Sophie decides to become a chicken keeper - a task made all the more complicated when she discovers someone trying very, very hard to get their hands on the strange hens of Blackbird Farm.
Review
This is a fun, odd little story of a girl finding her place under strange circumstances. Told in epistolary format, in letters to her late Hispanic grandmother and the deceased great-uncle, as well as correspondence with the eccentric owner of Redwood Farm Supply (who offers a free correspondence course in chicken keeping), Sophie's tale unfolds as she struggles to deal with a new home and a mother and father who both are under their own stresses; they didn't move to the farm because they had starry-eyed notions of becoming farmers, but because they had no choice, with Dad being out of work and Mom's freelance articles not being enough to pay for city life. The girl may not even recall setting foot on a farm before, but she is eager to make the best of a bad situation. The fact that she remembers to water her bean plant regularly certainly means she's qualified to keep poultry, doesn't it? If not, she's more than willing to learn. From her discovery of "Henrietta" and its unusual abilities, more strange chickens trickle their way back to the hen house - even as a neighbor seems unusually keen to poke around. Who else knew of her great-uncle's bizarre birds, and how is one twelve-year-old girl going to stop the thief from taking them? It's a fun story, with some nice information on chickens and chicken keeping thrown in along the way; even the "villain" isn't necessarily evil or scary or mean, and has their own reasons for thinking they'll do better by Sophie's strange flock than a green city girl. One twist is a bit obvious early on (to a grown-up reader, at least), but plays out okay nonetheless, and the ending leaves the coop open for more unusual poultry adventures.