This was an adorable tale! The little girl, Baby, as Big Mama calls her, sees it as her mission to catch every chicken. But one eludes her.
Shelley Jackson makes the story come alive with illustrations that seem real yet whimsical with a bit of collage throughout the book.
My children and I would have loved this when they were 5-8ish years old. It might have helped as educational moments as we had chickens back then. Learning that you must chase down a chicken every now and thing to medicate or isolate certain ones. But chasing, as fun as it could be, frighten the chickens and can be bad for them. My kids never found that a goal. Instead, they learned to gather eggs and mostly leave the chickens to live their own lives. They saw hens clutch and babies hatch and follow mothers around.
This fits in the Black Lives Matter category as the child, and her mom are black. It is incidental. This could have been any race living in rural areas. I like that. I can’t wait until things like this book become commonplace. Books and the arts should reflect our lives. All kinds of people live on this earth. Why not enjoy the variety?
Now that I am finished reading this book, I will donate it to the local library as I think it might be a good addition.
A beauty like this guy struts in my yard every day. He is not ours. Neither is his matching hen or a white hen. They wander our yard like they own the place. That’s okay with me as I think that cock-a-doodle-doo protects our three quieter hens.
Our three look like this one. We had four but a hawk got one of them. My brother had them all named. But I don’t know them that intimately. I do take care of one of their meals of the day. I have two peanut butter toasted sandwiches for breakfast. Kali gets one little corner and the chickens get the crusts. I am a vegetarian by nature. I am allergic to egg whites to the extent that I can’t get the flu shots or others that are based in albumin. But I love the sounds of the clucking and crowing all over my yard. They do their part to scratch out bugs and fertilize the soil. And my husband and brother enjoy the eggs. Me? I’m hoping for wee peep-peeps! But our girls attack the rooster if he comes near. Yay! Hens-lib! ??
Oh, that grass seen in the above pictures? That is truly greener on the other side of the fence. Our neighbor has managed to make and keep a beautiful lawn. We barely manage to keep the sagebrush away from our house.
Other animal sounds we hear around here lately are coyotes and their pups. One poor girl here was followed to the bus stop by a coyote. She was smart and stood tall and yelled and it ran away. But they can be quite dangerous for people and pets. We have to keep our gate closed and watch carefully for those who might jump over into our yard. Kali and the chickens are in danger. As are the two stray cats that have been here even before we moved here. Rosey and Teddy are indoor felines. Meow!
Our other neighbor has turkeys. When we gave ours away he got some of his own so the gobbles are still a welcome sound.
What doesn’t make sound, that we can hear here are the alpacas that are across the way. They are cute. I wish I had one. Can you imagine the yarn I could get if I got good at alpaca husbandry?
We have seen bear droppings at the campground twelve miles away. That is a sound I don’t want to hear! GRRRowl!
Oh, I just thought of the deer and antelope that play around this here range. Kind of like the baaing of lambs or goats that some neighbors have. There are a few horses. Neigh, not a lot. Ducks and geese quack their honks and especially at sunset as they settle down.
The most annoying, yet cute sound? Oh, my goodness. This mildish winter has brought in the mice. We have cute mice with shiny coats. The other day I was reaching in a cabinet for a can of beans and I heard a high pitch bunch of squeaks. It is no fun to live in the country when you find things like that. My brother found them and the chickens ate them up. Yes, I have tears in my eyes as I think of it. Soon after he caught a few bigger mice in traps.
I thought you might enjoy what our outdoor friends do that I have seen happen.
I just remembered the wonderful sound of last summer. We had some frogs somewhere between our yard and the nearest neighbor. The co-roaking was so cool! I hope we get it again this year, By the way, the weather is getting warmer and my son and I have made plans to start walking a bit. We spell out the word W-A-L-K so Kali doesn’t get too crazy. Her whining can quickly turn into barking lectures of great magnitude!
Per Linda:
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “animal sounds.” Write about the sounds animals make and how you experience them. Have fun!
I’ve fallen behind in my reading goal for this year so I decided to include a few picture books or other short books to catch up. Most of the books I’m reading lately are quite long. So these are a bit of a relief for my eyes and energies.
Help Me, Mr. Mutt! Jumped out at me when I visited the library last. I loved the cute dog on the cover and decided that would be a good one to try.
The idea of a dog answering letters for other dogs with people problems was delightful. I loved the sneaky letters after Mr. Mutt’s reply from Queen the cat were hilarious. I loved that Mr. Mutt was able to give charts to prove his answers (though I wonder at his fact finding abilities–seems rather fake news to me). Still, the dogs reading said letters would be grateful to see their desires as proven fact. A great introduction to charts and how they work!
And while I think this was all fun and games, I think a good pet owner would insert proper care for said pets when reading this book aloud to a child. After all, if a child were to read this to his or herself, he might think it okay to give pets people food or sugary foods, or follow other advice not so good for a dog or cat. Still, read with a sense of humor it could be a fun book for parent and child or teacher and students to share.
And did I mention the illustrations? They were awesome! Fun read!
Yesterday my brother finished the coop and moved our mini dinosaurs out of my piano room. Today that room is getting cleaned out (when it cools off this evening). Here’s what they all look like today:
Though they are kind of pretty from afar, they are scarier than velociraptors up close. That’s why I quit going into my piano room to say hello to the “chicks”. The sad thing is though we thought we had all hens, the turkeys all seem to be toms. I made them promise to be good for our little farm or they get re-homed. We don’t want to kill and cook. We only wanted the eggs and company. I’m allergic to eggs so I just wanted their company–and whatever weeding and de-bugging they can do.
Sorry I’ve been away from the blog for a while. I’ve been very busy. I’ll try to catch you up in the next few days.
Oh, if this doesn’t look right I am writing it on my tablet because it is already near triple digits so working on my laptop which heats way up is out of the question.
What better thing to begin with the letter Z than Zoo. Here are current pictures of mine:
Kali and Teddy on the day I went to Hugger Hats, taken by Hubby-AKA Pet Sitter.
Remember those little tiny chicks and turkeys? Yeah, I can’t pick up the turkeys anymore they are getting too big for me. The chickens never got brave enough to be picked up. The Turkeys try to get me to pet them and are so curious that they will pick on my cell phone as I try to take pictures. Bro is gathering materials to make the portable coop.
Kali wants to know when Kali can play with the fowl!
One tired Teddy-cat.
And another very tired Rosey-cat. Both were at our feet this morning with a dead mouse. Irm-thanks?
I’m not good at taking pictures. My phone isn’t good at taking pictures, but maybe this next one will show what my brother brought home today.
We now have three turkeys ( Bronze) and five chickens (Silver Laced Wyandottes). They are all females. My studio is warm from their lamp so I may be playing to the chicks. They are so soft and cute.
Withing a couple months brother will make a portable coop so that they can range around our yard without predators being able to get them, (finger crossed and enough smarts in the building end of things.
So maybe I’m not counting my chickens before they hatch. Rather I am counting my Eggs before they are laid. And a little bonus:
I’m counting my hugs before they are given. Can’t wait!
Come join the A to Z Challenge. Click on either of the badges above to go learn how.
What a sweet story about a woman, her family/friends, and some chickens! I feel jealous that she chose this title. I wish I would have thought of that! How adorable! I loved all the stories about the chickens that roamed over from the neighbors’ yard and became a part of their daily lives.
But then somewhere around 79% the story became about the author and her diet. I think that this should have been titled ‘about the author’, but I got over the change in flow and topic. In fact, I got a bit of ‘it’s a small world’ feeling as she tells of her life in 1968. She was in the same city as I was at the time. She and her husband must be very close to my age, a bit older but at our ages the few years don’t matter anymore. Not only were they in the same city but the author seemed to have the same diet of books that created her diet. Her research for pregnancy and raising children were the same as mine. Even her call of being flexitarian which I have been and was more back then than now. Now I am more vegetarian-leaning, always, toward vegan. Just can’t give up the cheese for long.
But back to the bucolic chickens and their lives. When my children were young I had an acre with roaming chickens and had a couple goats, too. Ms. Teri Metcalf brought that back to me and makes me impatient to get that life back. Only 19 days until that happens!
If you follow my reviews, you know that I am reading a lot about farming, gardening, and the like. Most of it is instructional. And so I went into this book thinking I’m reading some how-to book with personality. But into the second ‘chapter’ I realize I am reading an anthology of stories of farm life. Actually, I remember now, that in the first ‘chapter’ I was reading how this family was nearly dying of starvation and they were choosing which young one to not feed. I was horrified! At the end of that story, I figured out it was about chicken hawks and chickens. Not people. Whew! Then I realized I had liked that story after all.
But after a rather realistic story there is one that is about Chicken Little. I nearly stopped reading as it seemed too childish after what I had just read. But I gave it a chance and saw it was very cleverly written story of real life on a farm from the eyes of one of the chickens that had nearly died.
I don’t usually like short stories. As you may well know by now. But somehow, I got into this little book and enjoyed the author’s take on farm life. I picked up this book for free, but it is only $.99 right now. I think it is worth it if you want something different to read. I was so impressed that I went ahead and picked up a couple more stories by S.A. Moteni.
I did learn something. You can call yourself a farm hobbyist. That’s what I’m going to be! 🙂
Working on my series: Haven.
Doodler (zendoodle.com)
Music major: voice and piano
Mom of four great adults
Reiki II practitioner
I have been on disability/retired for 10 years now from depression, anxiety and fibromyalgia.
How does a free blog site work when everything is tied to dollars? How do you create content without using proprietary themes when it seems even the colors and fonts are tied to upgrades for usage? Is it even possible? I hope to find out.
The Chicken-Chasing Queen of Lamar County by Janice N. Harrington
Darswords 
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