  | Full Text Reviews: School Library Journal - 02/01/2015 PreS-Gr 2—With a touch of humor, this well-designed title presents everything you always wanted to know about chickens—but didn't know to ask. The book starts with an unnamed narrator who's been followed home by a fowl, asking, "What do I do now?" After the hen eventually lays and hatches eggs and the chicks mature into adult hens, the child hopes that the creatures will "follow someone else home." Along the way, readers are introduced to information on anatomy, care, and life cycle. A question begins each topic ("Will my chicken lay eggs?") with keywords highlighted with larger, bolder type. Details are labeled or given small call-out illustrations. Digitally produced, the images are well integrated with the text and use highly textured shapes. Bright, solid color backgrounds alternate with white ones. Readers will find tons of fun and well-presented material; one page displays 260 eggs, the average number a hen lays in a year. A concluding spread of "More Chicken Questions" gives further detail and a list of more resources. VERDICT A charming addition to animal collections. Expect newly hatched domestic fowl enthusiasts to crow over this one.—Carol S. Surges, formerly at Longfellow Middle School, Wauwatosa, WI - Copyright 2015 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission. Booklist - 05/15/2015 “A chicken followed me home! What do I do now?” Ever had that desperate feeling? Here, Page takes readers’ questions about the bird and gives simple answers to each query. The questions she poses (from the viewpoint of a child) include the essential, such as what a chicken eats to general curiosities, such as how to distinguish between a hen and a rooster, how to determine its breed, how to keep the animals safe, will it lay eggs (and, if so, how many), and what if I want baby chicks? The answers are given in a straightforward manner using vocabulary a child understands. The book’s bright, bold, colorful illustrations often cover a two-page spread and will draw in younger audiences, while older children will like the illustrations and be intrigued by the facts. Back matter includes more questions and answers about chickens and a short bibliography. A great book for families with backyard chickens. - Copyright 2015 Booklist. Bulletin for the Center... - 09/01/2015 Sure, kids may know what to do with a stray puppy or kitten, but what if a chicken follows them home? Page treats this appealing fictional problem, helpfully giving audiences answers to some basic questions (“What kind of chicken is it?”), providing information on chickens and their care, highlighting a few of the many breeds, and very briefly covering such topics as food, safety and shelter, gender identification, egg laying, and chick raising. Further information on chicken history, physical traits, and a chick’s development inside the egg, as well as a short list of resources and websites, are appended. The information given here isn’t detailed enough to set a kid up as a chicken farmer, but it’s a concise and inviting introduction to chickens, and the “chicken followed me home” premise is an amusing angle. The layout and digital illustrations (rendered in Photoshop) are simple, with rich, marbleized-looking reds and blacks stunningly creating the plumage of the tagalong chicken (a Rhode Island Red hen). Large figures and clean compositions with plenty of white space make this great for group sharing, while the brief text, clear fonts, and simple vocabulary will put this within readalone range for older primary-graders as well. Families considering embarking on the backyard poultry movement or classrooms raising chicks would want to supplement this with more detailed resources, but as a very first introduction to chickens and their care it would be hard to beat this. In addition, its brevity, striking artwork, and question/answer format will make it a winner with the storytime crowd. JH - Copyright 2015 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Loading...
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