“There aren’t any people around here–especially no brown people.” In another chapter, Sophie writes, “even though Mom was born here and speaks perfect English, she says you have to be twice as honest and neighborly when everyone assumes you’re an undocumented immigrant.” These moments, though, are not preachy. Through her letters to her abuela, Uncle Jim, and Agnes from Redwood Farm Supply, Sophie talks about her family’s financial problems and the small town’s lack of diversity. In the novel, author Kelly Jones addresses issues such as unemployment, racism, and classism, but never in a heavy-handed way. Dead-looking grapevines and blackbirds and junk piles and bugs, that’s it.” Sophie’s family is trying to start over after her dad lost his job.

The farm, though, is “more like a big, boring garden. Sophie and her parents move from Los Angeles to a farm, left to them by her late Great-Uncle Jim. MY TWO CENTS: It’s easy to love Sophie, the half-Latina main character in this middle grade novel that upgrades the “new girl in town” idea by adding cool, magical chickens and letters from the beyond. Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer releases May 12 with Knopf Books for Young Readers. But when a respected local farmer tries to steal them, Sophie must find a way to keep them (and their superpowers) safe. Determined, resourceful Sophie learns to care for her flock, earning money for chicken feed, collecting eggs. 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….Īnd then more of her great-uncle’s unusual chickens come home to roost. DESCRIPTION OF THE BOOK: 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.

Unusual chickens for the exceptional