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Are You Ready to Hatch an Unusual Chicken?

In Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer, Sophie discovered the chickens her family inherited from her late Great Uncle Jim, have special powers. Now Sophie is getting ready to oversee her first batch of eggs hatching, while her 18-year-old cousin, Luna, has come to stay with her family while she attends college nearby. It’s perhaps no surprise when the newly hatched chicks start behaving a little oddly—they’re Unusual Chickens, after all—but odd becomes dangerous when it appears one of them breathes fire. Sophie gets help from Luna even as her cousin adjusts to life with Sophie’s family and to college—her anxiety over the latter heightened at one point by an incident of racism. And Sam and Chris, the friends Sophie made after moving to town over the summer, are ready to lend a hand, but she wishes they and her new friend Xochi, the only other Latine student at her school, got along better with one another. Biracial (Mexican/white) Sophie’s warm, loving family, supportive friends, and over-the-top chicken antics, make for a lighthearted yet substantial story, one told primarily in letters and emails, with occasional black-and-white drawings and other visual elements. ©2019 Cooperative Children’s Book Center

Illustrated by Katie Kath

CCBC Age Recommendation: Ages 8-11
Age Range: Grades 3-5 (Ages 8-10) Grades 6-8 (Ages 11-13)
Format: Novel
Subjects: Animals (Fiction) Farming and Farmers Friendship Humor Magical Realism Mexicans and Mexican Americans Multiracial Characters/Families
Diversity subject: Latine

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Publish Year: 2018
Pages: 310
ISBN: 9781524765910

CCBC Location: Fiction, Jones